


Childhood? I'm Getting To Know Her

by sunflowerwhoneedsashower



Series: Reclaiming The Stolen Years - Verse [1]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: All Original Characters Are Background Characters, All The Hargreeves Kids Have Issues, Alternate Universe - Middle School, But Everyone Has An Arc, Character Development, Dead Characters Are Still Dead, Five Drinks so Underage Drinking (I guess), Five Enters Eighth Grade, Five-centric, Gen, Good Brother Klaus Hargreeves, Good Sister Vanya Hargreeves, Let Number Five | The Boy (Umbrella Academy) Say Fuck, Luther Is Trying, Middle School, Mild Language, No Allison/Luther Relationship, No Apocalypse, Number Five | The Boy Has Issues, POV Third Person, POV Third Person Semi-Omniscient, Post-Apocalypse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Allison Hargreeves, Protective Diego Hargreeves, Reginald Hargreeves' A+ Parenting, Sibling Bonding, They're All Bad At Expressing Themselves
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-09
Updated: 2019-04-15
Packaged: 2019-11-14 18:11:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 31,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18057500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunflowerwhoneedsashower/pseuds/sunflowerwhoneedsashower
Summary: Set in a future where the apocalypse has been successfully avoided, Vanya and Klaus pose as Number Five’s straight parents and enroll him in school after his therapist - yes, he has one of those - says that he needs more socialization. From there, it just gets more and more complicated. Apparently, Five was not made to thrive in a normal middle school. It doesn’t take the other students more than thirty seconds to notice that there is something off about him. It probably doesn’t help that Vanya and Klaus never thought to enroll him with a human sounding name. This can only go badly.





	1. Young Felon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five agrees to go to school and shops for clothing.

Number Five was sitting at the kitchen island picking at the breakfast that Grace had made him when Allison walked into the room. From the expression on her face, he knew that she was about to say something that he did not want to hear. Was she going to comment on the fact that it was already one in the afternoon and he had just rolled out of bed? He had heard that one enough times to last him for the rest of his life, and he swore his sister was obsessed with the concept of motherhood. The effect that giving birth had had on her psyche truly amazed him, but he didn’t have the patience to be the subject of her bizzare desire to be a parent right now. Claire was gone. He was too old and too tired to be her replacement child. Just as he was standing to leave the room, however, Luther walked in. This was not shaping up to be a good morning. He could feel it before his brother even started to speak.

“Five, we have an announcement to make,” Luther said. He hadn’t used that phraseology since he had, along with Allison, accused Grace of poisoning Reginald. Five put down his coffee and stared impatiently at Luther, who seemed to bask in the attention, waiting for almost ten seconds before resuming his statement, “A truancy officer came to the house today. Apparently, by not sending you to school, we’re in violation of something called a Compulsory Education Law. I tried to tell them that you were homeschooled, but I guess for some reason it matters that none of us have an education degree or an online… class thing, or whatever, for you.”

Allison dove in before Five could do that infuriating thing that he always did. Had always done, even when they were all kids. The classic snarky response. “There are options, Five, so don’t lash out at us. We know you’re an adult and your birth date information proves it, so we can fight this if you want, or you can try to test for your GED. Now, it might take a few months to fight it in the courts, and even then you won’t have a formal education and you won’t be able to go to college. We’d have to get your death certificate reversed.. Or whatever it is that they call it when they make someone stop being legally dead, and then somehow prove that you’re actually as old as your birth certificate says you are, but if that’s what you want, we can try --" she started to make an attempt at explaining the situation. 

Both expectedly and unexpectedly, Five interrupted, “Maggie has been saying it would be a good idea for me to socialize with those my physical age. I don’t think she believes that I’m actually fifty-eight, but I still think she might have a point... I want a doctorate and I likely will not be able to get one without schooling.” He had only been going to therapy for about six weeks, but at the end of every session he was implored to reach out to his ‘peers’. His therapist didn’t seem to understand that he had none. In mind, the closest thing to a peer for him was a sixty year old war criminal, but that wasn’t the kind of person that Maggie wanted him connecting to. She meant normal thirteen year old boys. 'Kids like him'. Still, Maggie did have a lot of good advice - poorly delivered and naiive as it could be at times.

His other three living siblings and his not-so-living sibling had been listening from outside the kitchen the entire time. Five noticed this when he heard Klaus laughing, no, snickering. Vanya knew that they were caught and she stepped in, lingering next to the cut-out in the wall that served as a door with a sympathetic expression on her face. Klaus was still caught-up in the humor of it all. A man of nearly sixty who had committed more murders than the rest of them put together going to.. what was it? Middle school? It was the most insane thing he had ever heard. Diego looked incredulous, sticking his head in the door but not daring to actually walk in. “Five’s actually agreeing to this?” He couldn’t help but ask.

Five understood the confusion. He himself was surprised when the words came out of his mouth. He couldn’t imagine being surrounded with grimy eleven to thirteen year olds for eight hours of his day five days per week - though he supposed it wasn’t that much unlike his previous career. Temporal assassins, for the large part, were disgusting boneheads. Five was used the company of idiots, but having to pretend that he was actually the age he looked would be a challenge for him.

\- - -

Flash forward to later that afternoon. Five was out with all of his siblings. They’d taken the unfortunate mini-van that his brother Luther had bought in a lapse of judgement that Five would never be able to understand. Not that he had tried much. They were in a store the likes of such Five had not seen in nearly fifty years shopping for school clothing for him. He’d yet to enroll, but even he knew that his uniform was not appropriate for the situation. Something Five would never tell his siblings: he did kind of care what he wore. At least, he was tired of wearing what he had worn before everything happened. It felt wrong and backwards, an absolute denial of everything that he had done, been through, and accomplished. He had worked as an assassin for three years, spent forty-two years in an apocalyptic wasteland by himself and saved the world. Someone who had done all of that was not supposed to dress in a school uniform for a school that didn’t exist, wasn’t a school. His lack of scars made it hard enough.

Long gone were the remains of his chemical burns, the missing tip of his right ear from the first time he had tried to cut his hair, the permanent ridges in his lips, and the thick jagged line down the center of his kneecap.There were so many ways that Five wasn’t himself, things that no one but him could see, so he wanted to change in at least one small respect. Few things he could control, but his wardrobe at least was one of them. He had been standing in between the men’s section and the boys’ section, right in the middle of the store, lost in these thoughts. Five didn’t know which direction to go, or if it even mattered. Being caught between two lives was a bitch.

“Five?” He heard a concerned voice call. The teenage man - not man child - looked around for the owner of those words and that concern. It was Klaus, of all people. “Five, are you okay?” Vanya was glaring at his brother for some reason and she said something he couldn’t hear. Whispered it to Klaus. He knew what she said without hearing it. _I knew we shouldn’t have brought him here. He can’t handle it. You saw his file. He’s a fucked up kid._ Of course, Vanya didn’t have the malice to use those words, but that was the jist of what she meant and he could not be convinced otherwise. Not that Five was going to bring it up. If he did, he would only make it look more true. He wasn’t supposed to care what people thought.

“Come on, you two,” Five told them as he turned toward the boys’ section, leaving them to follow with the cart. His clothing criteria were simple, but specific: no bright colors or pastels, no earth tones, no capris, no blazers, no dresses, no heels, no t-shirts. He went through the section piling in mostly dark colors, muted tones and neutrals. Jeans and slacks, sweaters and button-ups with various sleeve lengths, long-sleeved shirts and turtlenecks, khakis and dress shoes, Converse and Vans, jackets and hooded sweatshirts, autumn boots and spring boots, ties and hair gel. Simple and methodical was his process. He wasn’t entirely reinventing himself, keeping it mostly basic, though he did grab three or four more experimental pieces when no one was watching. Things to try out in the privacy of his room before deciding to wear in public. All Five knew was that the next week was going to be complete and utter mayhem, that he needed something to help him get through it. He couldn’t go to school drunk and coffee only did so much, so he thought maybe he could find ways to feel more comfortable in his skin while sober.

There was no choice. He had to commit to his new life now. His apocalypse-free life. This knowledge didn’t stop him from turning red and angry when the cashier called him a ‘nice young man’ and referred to Diego as his ‘father’, though.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you didn't hate it! I'll be improving the characterization and adding more dialogue to the next chapter. I was really just trying to set up the story and include all of the characters in this chapter.


	2. Ten-Thirty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Number Five snaps at his sister and is almost late to enroll in middle school.

Number Five was lying in bed, half awake, when a beam of light began to shine through his blinds. He closed his eyes and turned over on his stomach, hiding his face in his pillow. He heard rustling in his bedroom. “Grace, how many times have I told you to leave my room alone?” Five asked tersely, not expecting an answer. He did this often, asked questions without answers. He gets an answer, though. It’s not Grace in his room at all, but instead Allison.

“Hey Five-o.. wake up. You don’t want to be late to enrollment. It’s a big day. You’re the first of our family to actually go to school,” her tone was high, enthusiastic. As always, he was quick to shut her down. He was not and never would be Claire.

He sat up quickly and looked at Allison, “First off, you know I loathe nicknames. Second, I can enroll at whatever point in the day I want. It’s just paperwork. Third, stay out of my room when I’m sleeping. Are you trying to make me change my mind and get my GED? Because it’s working. You’re way too happy about this. I’m not your child. You don’t get to be excited on my first day of school. Just go to therapy already so you can be excited about your own daughter’s first day. She wants your attention way more than I do.”

His eldest little sister looks crushed. Five knew that he was a little cutting with her, but it was what she needed to hear and no one else was going to tell her. He was on his own path to becoming a real human being and he didn’t need Allison feeling sorry for herself all over it. Hopefully she took it to heart. He blinked over to his wardrobe. Still just old uniforms.

Oh. Right. He had gone to bed before putting his new clothes in his wardrobe last night. Maybe he really should start letting Grace clean up his room. Just maybe not when he was asleep. Five started to rummage through the large plastic bags and ended up grabbing a muted maroon sweater and some dark blue denim jeans. He remembered the last time he had worn jeans. For an interview in 2001 that had no mission attached. Jeans had looked different then. Now they had smaller ankles and often rode higher.

By the time Five finished finding something to wear, Allison had left the room without so much as another word. She was mad at him, he assumed. It wasn’t a feeling he enjoyed, but Five pushed it aside and got dressed for breakfast. He was downstairs and entirely ready by nine in the morning, a five hour improvement on the day before.

Vanya was already there, also dressed, enjoying the eggs and toast that Grace had made her. She looked over at Five and smiled, “Looking sharp, little brother. Did you get a good night’s rest for school? You’ll need it. Those places drain all the life out of you. I chose to go to music school of my own accord to study what I was passionate about and it was still tiring.” He walked over to the coffee pot as she spoke, giving no indication that he was listening to a word that Vanya said. Of course, he was. One accustomed to silence has no choice but to listen to each and every word that they hear - and, for the most part, Vanya seemed the most worthy of his attention right now. That is to say that she was typically the most tolerable of his siblings because she was quiet and only spoke when she actually had something to say.

“I’m not your little brother,” Five said in an even tone, though his tense face showed some… irritation. “Actually, I did sleep well last night. How fascinating," he mused aloud while he poured himself a cup of black coffee. His facial expression faded back into his normal one and he sat down across from Vanya at the table. Then something else caught his mind's eye. “You went to music school,” He used the inflection of a question, but it still didn’t really come out like one. Five paused for a moment. There were so many things that he had missed. Luckily, the rest of his family had too, so he wasn’t too terribly behind, but he hated not being in the know about what his siblings were doing. Growing up, they had been the one constant in his life. They were all the same, unchanging. Even when Five came back, they acted the same and most of the differences with them were in Vanya’s book. He had already adjusted to their adult selves before even having met them.

Vanya smiled with a sense of what Five could only assume was fondness. Her face looked gentle, almost serene, “Alright, fine. Small brother. Is that better for you? And yeah, I went to music school. I studied for four years. I always wanted to be a successful violinist.. Now that I’m first chair, though. I don’t know. It doesn’t seem as important anymore. Especially since I only have the part because the last girl was murdered.” She had always been prone to melancholy. Calm, almost at peace, and then suddenly somber. Her emotions were not predictable, though really.. whose were? There wasn’t a soul in the world for whom the inner workings of the mind he could understand. Not even himself. There were few professions that Five believed he could not manage to succeed in, but psychology was certain one of them.

Five looked at Vanya with slight exasperation and he said, “Not particularly, but it’s a start. You’re doing better than Allison, at least, though Klaus has you all beat. He so much doesn’t see me as a child that he thinks I have money to loan him. Once he even tried to send me out to buy him alcohol.” About four seconds later, Five started to speak again. He hated when he did that, stopped mid-thought. It was like his mind got lost along the way, as if he were some sort of fool that couldn’t even speak a paragraph’s worth information - which he knew that he was not. “If you care about violin so little, just do something else. You’re too young to be burnt out. There’s time yet and you have a whole life left to live,” Five advised with the wisdom of age. It was moments like this that conflicted him - it seemed rather unfair to speak tenderly to Vanya and be harsh to Allison. Maybe he should have been a bit more sharp just now… or did this mean that he had been to cruel to his other sister? Five brushed the thought aside when Grace put his breakfast in front of him.

Klaus still wasn’t up and it was almost nine-thirty. The six siblings on this plane of existence had agreed last night that Vanya and Klaus would go to register Five for school at ten in the morning. It stood to reason that the two white-passing dark haired siblings would have to be the ones to do it. This was the way that administration would ask the least questions. A straight, white couple coming to enroll their son. Never mind that they had no chemistry and were both emotional short fuses. Well, Vanya not so much anymore, but the last time Klaus had been his fake father it had not gone without a hitch. The dysfunctional adult had smashed a snow globe into his head. It had been effective, but still - he couldn’t act anything like himself at the school or this situation would become very disastrous very quickly.

Twelve minutes later, Klaus ambled down the stairs and into the kitchen. His hair was still a mess and he was wearing… pyjamas? That was unusual. He usually wore either clothing from the day before or stumbled down the stairs in his underwear and not much, if anything, else. “Oh, good morning, dear,” Klaus said in the whiny, slightly higher pitched voice that he used whenever he was acting. He approached Vanya and kissed her cheek. “And son, are you excited to see your new school?” Klaus went to rustle Five’s hair, but before he got the chance there was a tight grip on his wrist. He fake sighed, “What? Won’t let your dear old dad mess with your hair? I brought you into this world, young man.”

Five let go of Klaus’ wrist. “Go get dressed,” he ordered, “We’re leaving in seventeen minutes, so you better be ready. I’m driving and you can eat in the car. I’ll have Grace get you something.” His brother laughed and turned up the stairs without another word. He would never get over the drastic contrast between Five’s behavior, tone of voice and appearance. As amusing as it was, however, it kind of made Klaus wonder how well this whole middle school thing was going to work out. He felt like he should stop his brother from doing this and just help him get his GED, but he also wondered what would happen. Klaus remembered the donut shop, how he let Five go out to get coffee on his own and he ended up killing four people and cutting his own arm open. He remembered what Luther had told them about that night, the way Five had looked at him, grabbed his arm tightly, told him no one could help. Klaus didn’t want to be the subject of his brother’s unbridled anger, and that was ultimately why he went along with just about whatever crazy thing that Five told him.

While Klaus changed, Five and Vanya sat in comfortable silence. His sister was lost in thought, thinking about her future and trying to imagine what her life would be like if she did something different - if she followed a path other than the violin. Meanwhile, Five was using a glitter gel pen that he had nabbed off of Allison to scrawl sloppily into a composition notebook. He was exacting as always, albeit scattered. Five wrote a list of points to cover in enrollment and came up with a background for his imaginary family. He also listed every clothing item he had bought and was trying to figure out the most logical way to arrange his clothing for the most efficiency while getting ready in the morning. At the same time, Five was trying to record every important piece of knowledge that he had on each of his siblings. He needed to find appropriate things to tease them about, because apparently normal people, especially at the age of thirteen, liked to taunt their siblings in a playful manner. Five had no idea how to do that.

Klaus came back down the stairs and Five looked up from his notebook, immediately becoming alert. His brother stared at him for a few seconds before he said, “Nice pen. I have a few of those myself. Where’d you get it? Allison?” He smirked at his brother, as if they were somehow sharing a secret, a big moment. Five just nodded and showed no signs of amusement, closing the notebook and standing up. He blinked out of the room, likely to either the car or the gate to the lot that the house was on. Klaus gave Vanya a humored look, as if to say, _‘This kid, am I right?’_ but Vanya was still glancing off into the distance aimlessly. “Vanya?” Klaus asked. He wondered if he was cursed, because this was the second day in a row that one of his siblings had ignored him in a complete daze. Wow. “Vanya?”

Vanya shook her head and blunk a few times before focusing on Klaus. “Sorry. I was just thinking about something Five said. He gives good advice, you know. For someone who looks like he does. It’s hard not to think of him as a kid sometimes, but then he says something no thirteen year old should have the insight to say and I remember… Anyways, therapy seems to be working pretty well for him. Not that it’s easy to tell this early on. He keeps too much bottled up for us to really know, though, doesn’t he?” She realizes that she’s said too much and she stands up, starting to walk out of the room. “Let’s go. I hope we’re not late.”

Klaus climbs into the passenger seat. Five is already in the car, sitting in the driver’s seat, and he looks like he belongs there. The way he carries himself - he looks like he’s been driving those long shipping trucks for a living for thirty years. He just has that kind of confidence. Klaus doesn’t think anything of it, since he can’t drive anyways, but Vanya walks up to the driver’s side window and says something that someone like her shouldn’t have the courage to say to someone like Five. “You should probably let me drive,” she tells her brother. She looks hesitant, but doesn’t shrink back like she often does when she speaks, “If the school sees us letting our thirteen year old drive, they’ll likely report us to the authorities. We’ve already almost gotten in trouble with the law for not sending you to school. I don’t want to make things any worse.” Five sits there for a second, but he eventually nods and hops out of the car.

“Klaus, move. I’m sitting in the passenger seat,” Five demands while Vanya climbs into the driver’s seat. His brother groans at him. “Klaus, you heard me,” Five says. His words bite, like a former police dog barking at the new kitten for being on his bed. Except, somehow, it’s more scary than that. Klaus takes one last moment to enjoy the leg room before he gets out, too, allowing Five, well not so much allowing him as being bullied into letting him, to have the front seat. Klaus stretches before tossing himself into the back seat.

\- - -

When Vanya pulls up to the middle school about fifteen minutes later, Five is leaning against the passenger door, resting his head in his hand, eyes focused on the surroundings. She can’t tell if he’s annoyed with her for making them late or if his mind is just in another place, but she notices that he looks young for a moment. She almost expects him to roll his eyes at her or do something else stereotypically teenage, but instead he climbs out of the car calmly. The moment is gone and he looks too old for his face again. “In case you’re wondering, it’s exactly ten-thirty. The time that I planned for us to arrive," he says. Klaus and Vanya share a look that Five doesn’t understand, like they think his planning skills are funny for some reason.

The three walk into the middle school together - Five in front, while Klaus and Vanya follow closely behind. They struggle to keep up with him. Vanya because Five is quick and has longer legs, while for Klaus it’s because he’s a bit distracted by the building. Its exterior is as bland as that of a rehab center. Not that he would know that.

Five doesn’t notice that the outside of the building looks boring, focused on their goal. His body runs solely on caffeine and spite. The longer he survives the more he upsets The Handler and the more he proves Reginald wrong. By living when he is not supposed to, he defies the logic that he has grounded his life in. Especially when he was alone, when all of humanity was supposed to be extinct. He wasn’t. Before Five knows it, he’s standing in front of the school’s main office - which, according to their website, is where new students are supposed to go.

Things really had changed since 2002, hadn’t they? He was the only thing that was the same, and even that was only superficial. Same name, same body, but a different mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So if you can't tell, this isn't the enrollment chapter that I promised, but I already wrote it and I'll be uploading it tonight. Ignore my tense errors and feel free to let me know if there's anything you would like to see happen once Five gets enrolled.


	3. Five, Number.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five finally enrolls in school. It goes about as well as you expect it to.

“Focus, Five,” he mumbled to himself under his breath before speaking to his siblings in a louder, clearer voice, “Alright. When we go in there, you two have to take control. Remember that I’m thirteen while we’re in that room. This means you can’t defer to me if you forget what you’re supposed to say. You’ll just have to improvise. Look over your notes real quick - and Vanya, you’ll be doing most of the talking because Klaus can’t remember simple lines and he gets a little out of hand when he improvises.” He waited while Vanya deeply studied the notes that Five had written for her; there was no wait with Klaus, who quickly scanned them and probably remembered nothing on them. “Ready?” Vanya nodded her head. He didn’t even bother to ask Klaus, because he was always ready for anything.

Vanya opened the door and let Five and Klaus go in before her. “We have a new student, our son. He’s thirteen,” She told the middle-aged woman with bright orange hair who sat at the front desk. Her hair was clearly the result of an attempt at natural ‘ginger’ hair gone wrong and she was large and wore a purple blouse with white polka-dots all over it. This woman looked exactly like what Klaus imagined a middle school secretary would look like, actually. Klaus gave her his best fatherly smile. It was abysmal and beyond creepy, but not as terrifying as Five’s attempt at an innocent, childish smile. It seemed Vanya was really the one making this mission a success.

Miss Andie, the secretary, looked at the family that had come in to enroll their son. The mother looked normal, if a bit tired and plainly dressed. She understood that. Having a teenager was exhausting, and she gave off the vibe of a working mother. The father was a little odd looking, with wild hair and wilder eyes. One of those failed musicians who spent too much time with his nineties cover band and not enough time with his child, from the looks of it.. and his smile was outright disturbing. However, when she got a real look at the child, she almost entirely forgot about how strange his father was. The kid looked like something out of a poltergeist movie. His eyes were dark and empty, almost haunted, and his smile was flat. He dressed normally, but the way he styled his hair and the way he carried himself, even sitting in the chair in the back, he seemed like a dark force of nature.

She was unsettled by what she saw in the eyes of this child, but she started to get out the papers anyways. It was a public school, so it wasn’t exactly like they could deny the kid enrollment because he seemed a little weird. “What’s his name?” she asked the couple, trying to ignore how much they didn’t belong, how little chemistry they had, and the fact that there was clearly something wrong with their son.

Klaus answered before he could think, “Number Five,” he told her. After the words came out of his mouth, he looked shocked. He probably should have lied on that one, shouldn’t he have? It was strange. He was one of the most experienced liars he knew - more so than even his favorite young murderer - yet he was the one accidentally telling the truth.

Vanya didn’t even seem to realize that it was something he shouldn’t have said, though, because when he looked at her, expecting her to explain that he had just been joking and then give out a random, human-sounding name, she just nodded. “First name Number. Last name Five. We mostly call him Five, though.” To her, his name being Five felt natural. It hadn’t even occurred to her that it was one of the things that made their family weird. One of the things that they were supposed to hide so that they could enroll their little brother - no, her small brother - in middle school like a normal child of the age that he looked. From the chair in the back, Five groaned and put his forehead to his hand. They were absolutely useless.

The secretary made a face when the father said the name. Had these bizarre people really given their little boy a number as a name? Maybe they were why the kid looked like such a monster. Did they even treat him like a human being? And why Number Five of all the numbers out there? It didn’t even sound like a name. This family really got stranger by the second. “Okay…” Miss Andie said, trying to keep from showing her feelings on her face. She was failing, but she instead posed another question, “What school should we be expecting his records to come in from?” _Please,_ she thought, _let it be a normal center of education and not one of those weird think tanks._ Last time she had gotten one of those students, three teachers had quit.

This time, Vanya answered the question first. “Oh, he’s been homeschooled, but he’s brilliant. I actually have some of his projects in the car. This kid’s a whiz when it comes to math and science. I don’t really have the brain for it, but I catch him reading about metaphysics sometimes.” The next part of her statement, however, she says quieter, like she doesn’t want her son to hear it, “He’s a little too into sci-fi, though. He thinks he can time travel if he just gets good enough at math. I have no idea what he means by it, but any reason for him to study so hard outside of ordinary lessons is a good reason to me.” She sounds perky, excited - like she is actually proud of her son. Maybe Andie was wrong about this family. The dad’s a bit strange and the kid has an unsettling face, but they didn’t seem like murderers. _Well, maybe the kid…_

“Could you bring in those projects? They might help us place him in a class,” Miss Andie told the mother. She then handed the paperwork to the father for him to fill out. He kept whispering to his son to answer the questions - like he didn’t know anything about his own child. The thirteen year old gave curt answers. Impatient. This was definitely a terrible father. She thought she had probably hit the head on the nail when she first saw him. Nineties cover band.

Meanwhile, Five was trying to come up with a way to explain why his name was Number Five that would make sense and ease away the strangeness that his family carried with them wherever they went. Why would someone name their only child Number Five? He thought of it: four miscarriages before he was born. That or four dead siblings. No, it was even less normal than having a weird name. Maybe he could say it had something to do with how his parents met. It was probably for the best that he just said nothing about it, actually. Five was practiced when it came to saying nothing about strange things that everyone wondered about.

The mother came back in with a binder full of young Number’s old work, from just before he had started working on time travel - when he was still practicing. There are different subjects, from literary analysis to trigonometry to the British suffragette movement to, yes, scientific theory. When Andie sees the work in the binder, she can’t help but wonder why they’re even enrolling their son in a regular school. Luckily, the father of all people says, “He could get his GED, we know, but he’s too small for college and he’s oh-so-restless at home. Our Five needs to be with kids his age.” Okay, so maybe she had overreacted when she judged this family. They were odd, but they loved each other. At least, she could assume so. He handed her the completed paperwork and that was that. Number Five was enrolled in the eighth grade.

She printed out a schedule, assigning him to the most advanced classes that they had. It would still be boring for him, though, because the only honors option that they had was Algebra I for eighth graders. Poor, strange little Number. He was going to be miserable here.


	4. Burns of Two Kinds and Two Degrees

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five burns himself making coffee.

Number Five grumbled about in the kitchen. He murmured indiscernibly. Not even he knew exactly what he was trying to say to himself, but the silence in the room made him uncomfortable. After years of living in the quiet, he had come to take on odd form of solace in the quiet voices he could usually hear from other rooms in the house, the muffled music, the running fans… the white noise helped him focus. Usually the one who slept in, it had been the first time he had heard the house this eerily quiet in a long time. No one was supposed to be awake before six in the morning, he had decided that morning. Even Grace was re-charging.

He was standing in his pyjamas, putting coffee grounds into the French Press that Vanya brought when she moved in. Five was still in kind of a daze, but making a pot of coffee was something that he could do with his eyes closed. In fact, this was what he was doing, turning to pour the boiling water into the Press, when he heard a creak on the stairs.

Now, he was generally a calm person, but the events that had occured only two months ago had him a little on edge. Not to mention the fact that The Commission could come back for him if it ever decided to. Five had made it extremely clear that now that the Apocalypse was outside the lifetimes of he and his family he had no interest in altering the timeline. They had no reason to pursue him. Still, his home had been attacked before.

This said, Five had quickly glanced over when he heard the noise. In the process, he’d splashed boiling water on his hand and dropped the pot as a result of it. “Shit..” he muttered. There was no exclamation, no shock. The sound of the metal on the ground practically drowned out his reaction entirely. The water was too hot to walk through without shoes - he had learned his lesson there nearly forty years ago - so he merely turned away to leave for the bathroom.

Diego, the apparent source of the creak, walked into the room, fully clad in his usual outfit - if it could be called an outfit. “Hey Fiver.... what are you doing up? It’s like six in the morning. And what was that noise. Are you alright, little man?” It was too early to be patronized and Number Five didn’t have time to be fussed over. He still had to make coffee, eat breakfast, shower, brush his teeth and get dressed. Yes, his ability helped his efficiency and helped him avoid the awkward shuffle between the bathroom and his bedroom after his showers, but he still needed every minute of the time that he had. Five was someone who planned precisely. When it was just him, things didn’t go wrong, and he didn’t factor in extra time.

“Irrelevant. Just clean the kitchen up and make a pot of coffee, would you?” he said dismissively before blinking out of the room and into the bathroom upstairs. There, he ran his hand under cold water quickly and then took his shower. About fifteen minutes after he had left the room, he came back down the stairs in a soft looking grey sweater and another pair of jeans. Diego still wasn’t used to seeing Five dressed in ordinary clothing, and it took him a moment to realize that he was seeing his brother and not Vanya with a different haircut.

“Five? Are you okay? I saw the water on the ground and the stove was still on. It’s not like you to just drop water and leave without even turning everything off. Did you burn yourself?” Diego asked. Diego, of all people, the one who was supposed to be the one who treated him the second least like a child. He supposed the vigilante in his brother just caused him to be protective, but it was irritating all the same. “I dried it up as best I could and I made coffee,” Diego offered, hoping for peace. It seemed he had at the very least realized that he was being obnoxious. That was more than could be said for just about anyone aside from Vanya.

He sighed with exasperation and walked over to the cabinet, pulling out a cup and immediately proceeding to pour coffee into it. Number Five took a sip of the drink and swallowed it before he said, “This tastes like shit.” He then poured the entire caraface down the drain.”I’m not an idiot, you know,” he said abruptly, turning to face Diego. “I know you’ve been looking at the burn. I can feel your beady little eyes crawling across my skin.” Five blinked over to the fridge and opened it before he made an offer of his own, “You know what? I’ll save you some time and concern. I have a second degree burn on my right hand, but I ran it under cold water. It doesn’t hurt, and it isn’t severe enough to need bandaging. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m taking the car.”

Diego watched as Five started to walk out the door and he called out, “That’s not a good idea, Five. Remember? They think you’re thirteen. And you don’t have a license. You’ve gotten into enough trouble this week, haven’t you? Can’t you just let one day go by where we don’t have to worry about your relationship with the law?” When his brother turned and glared at him with those cold, empty eyes, Diego felt the air leave his body.

Maybe he understood why Klaus did what he did now. Not the substance abuse, the whole letting Five boss him around thing. Though, come to think of it, that too. If ghosts were half as horrifying as an enraged Number Five, he would be do anything he could to get rid of them as well. “You have no reason to worry about me, Number Two. You flunked out of the Police Academy, remember? None of this has anything to do with you. Eudora was right, you know. You need to piss off and stop trying to be involved where no one wants you.”

Diego clenched his fists and his jaw went tight. He had to focus on holding himself back from striking Number Five - and that was a first, for him. No matter how much of a bastard the guy was, he hadn’t ever wanted to physically harm him. Until just now. Bringing Eudora into an insult was just sick. Of course, he should have anticipated it from Five of all people, but still. What the fuck? “I’m getting some better coffee. Make sure Vanya is downstairs and ready by the time I come back,” That’s the last thing his bitter brother says before he vanishes in a whirlwind of blue light.

Five had returned with a large to-go cup of coffee - and Diego had done as he had asked, or maybe Vanya just got up to give him a ride of her own volition. Either way, it didn’t matter. She was sitting in the main room, just waiting for him to come home so they could leave. “Diego told me you burned yourself, and I know you don’t like it when I ask if you’re okay, but I swear I would do the same even if it was Luther. Are you alright? You’re my brother. I’m going to worry about you no matter how old or how strong you are,” She commented with a timid voice. Like she was afraid he would lash out at her, too.

Okay, so Diego had definitely told her what had happened that morning. Number Five grabbed his backpack and walked toward the door, “Like I said before, it’s not severe. Don’t ask me again - and don’t try to look at it discreetly. I will catch you. Now, come on. Let’s go,” He discarded her concern and got in the passenger seat of their smaller car. It still felt so unnatural for him not to be the one driving. He’d been alone in the car, taking himself everywhere he wanted to go, for forty-four years. Riding in the car was something he’d likely never get used to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comment any thoughts and opinions you may have!! i love feedback! 💞💞


	5. Too Many Mackenzies, Not Enough Braincells

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five goes to his first class.

Number Five walked into his Eighth Grade English classroom. Everyone in there was so small, both in body and mind, and so inexperienced. These people didn’t know the world. They didn’t even know that had almost ended a little less than two months prior, and they certainly didn’t know that they were in the company of a man who had started wars, killed dictators, and, perhaps most unsettling of all, eaten insects for forty-two years of his life.

In the front of the room, stood a short, portly man in a pale blue button-up and white jeans that were, Five assumed, supposed to pass as slacks. With those, he wore tennis shoes. He had glasses and thinning hair - and for some strange reason his face brought to mind that of a frog. Rows of children with bright, if occasionally wicked, eyes faced him. No particular characters stuck out - aside from a girl with hair that had been dyed an obnoxious shade of red. It reminded Five of Allison’s attempt at purple hair when they had all been eleven.

It physically hurt him to do so, but he sat down in an empty chair near to the back of the room, behind one of the taller children. Perhaps if the teacher, if an underqualified and terribly depressed man in their middle ages who spoke to children because they were the only ones who respected him counted as a teacher, would not acknowledge Five if he could not see him.

The teacher, Mr. Gordam, started to read off the names of his students - as he did every morning. He scanned the list, speaking each name aloud as he read it. There were a few names he had to stop on, students who used different names than the ones on the roster, but most of those were just derivatives of the names on the paper. Mr. Gordam reached the end of his list, finishing with _Yung, Logan._ This was the point at which he noticed a name that didn’t belong. Not only was it out of alphabetical order, it was also a name he had never seen before.

_Five, Number._

How strange. “Number?” He called out to the room, trying to mask his bewilderment. A short, dark-haired boy in a grey sweater poked his head out from behind a taller student with blonde hair. Mackenzie S., who not to be confused with Mackenzie Y., as the girls were enemies.

“What do you want?” the new student, apparently named Number, spoke calmly in response. This child had an unsettling form of… was that confidence? He carried himself like a soldier, thought he was bigger than he was. Mr. Gordam had seen kids like that before, but they usually had this underlying sense of anger or anxiety. Behind this one’s facade, he saw nothing. Like the inside of his soul was just… empty. It threw him off.

“Just making sure you’re here. Welcome to the class. Care to introduce yourself? Just tell the class where you’re here from, a little bit about your family, maybe your favorite color or food. Or your hobby of choice. Perhaps your favorite book since this is an English class. Whatever you think would give us the best idea of who you are,” Mr. Gordam spoke as gently as he knew how to without losing all sense of authority. It wasn’t a suggestion, though he phrased it like one. He hoped that the teenager was able to tell this.

The students eagerly turned their heads to face the new student, enthralled by his unique name and the attitude with which he talked to their teacher. Today was going to be interesting - and most of them found themselves hoping that they had more classes with his Number character.

“Alright, I suppose, since I’ll be here for a while, I can give you all the luxury of knowing a bit about me. My name is Number Five. I used to be homeschooled, but I’ve lived in the city for thirteen years. I like coffee and peanut butter and marshmallow sandwiches, and I read the classics and books about metaphysics and the multiverse theory. I believe it may help me in my future career. Though I suppose my other hobby would be target practice or sleeping until one in the afternoon and stumbling down the stairs in a drunken stupor.”

Mr. Gordam made a face that could only be described as one of shock, “Okay… you’re a very humorous young man, aren’t you? Next time you make a joke, I implore you to use a bit more vocal inflection, and perhaps change your facial expression. You also may want to read the room a bit better. This isn’t the place to talk about weaponry or alcohol.” The students’ mouths were all wide open, and a couple of them were giggling quietly. What was with this kid? Was he even joking, or did he really like that nerdy science stuff, shooting and drinking through the night? “Class, calm down. I know our new student has a sense of humor, but we need to get through two chapters of The Outsiders today. There’s a quiz over the first half of the book soon.”

It was now Number Five’s turn to be puzzled. There was nothing wrong with what he had said - and he did not understand why it was apparently humorous that his interests and hobbies would be what they were. He had only been authentic. Maggie had told him to try and open up more, but he guessed that maybe school wasn’t the best place to do that. It also seemed backwards that he wasn’t ‘allowed’ to talk about alcohol or weaponry when the book they were reading had all sorts of violence in it. He would talk to this Gordam guy about it later.

He had already read The Outsiders and remembered its contents well enough. After all, he had lived in a library for about four years, so Five pulled the composition notebook he had been writing in before and the purple glitter gel pen he had taken from Allison out of his dark green backpack. Number Five resumed writing all of the relevant information he could come up with about his siblings. Learning what to do when he talked to them seemed far more important than whatever these eighth graders were up to.

Previously, Five had been trying to come up with ways to tease his siblings, but he had recently shifted his focus. After this morning with Diego, he had decided he was going to run a study. Just a simple one. He wanted to see which of his siblings was the easiest to upset enough that they did not talk to him. To put it simply, he was going to be as much of an asshole as he possibly could without causing worry or alerting them of his scheme.

Mr. Gordam began to read to the class. Some students rested their heads on their hands with exhaustion, while others listened attentively. It was the first class of the morning, so he understood weary eyes. As long as they didn’t turn their attention to their phones or fall asleep, he could be patient. Their grades would reflect how well they had understood what he was saying, so it seemed rather pointless to scold students who were trying to pay attention.

One student, however, caught his eye. His new student, Number, had pulled out a notebook and was writing in it furiously, flipping back and forth between pages with a razor-like focus. He paused his reading, “Number? I can get you a book. You don’t have to take notes if you don’t want to.” Now, he had a feeling in his gut that the young man was not actually writing about the book at all, but he had to give students the benefit of the doubt.

“Don’t bother,” the kid quipped. “There is nothing you can teach me through this novel that I haven’t already learned. I’ve already read the book, and likely completed the entirety of your curriculum. It’s best you just allow me to sit in here and do my work for an hour a day, whilst you try to teach these shallow peabrains what they should already know.” Despite the clear attitude in his word choice, Number kept a level tone - like he was just that sure that he was smarter than anyone else in the room. This thirteen year old was trying to crush Mr. Gordam under his heel, and it was almost working. Yet again, the entire class was in an uproar. They were laughing, almost cackling, and it was hard to tell who the subject of their amusement was.

“Number, I know things that no thirteen year old could. Just put the notebook away, unless you would rather sit in the hallway for the rest of class. I wouldn’t want to have to write you up.” He made an attempt to assert himself, speaking in a firm voice, but the boy just stood, put his backpack in his seat to zip it, put it on his back, grabbed the notebook and walked out of the room. As if Mr. Gordam’s words meant nothing to him. Like being written up didn’t matter.

The students whooped and hollered as the new kid left the room, and for the rest of the class, it was impossible to get them to settle down enough to actually listen to the chapter. There was a buzzing in the air, this general interest in the new student, that kept all of their energy high. _Why was he homeschooled? Had he gotten kicked out of another school before? Is he really that smart? Isn’t he weird? His name is Number. Did you see his purple glitter pen? I wonder what he was writing about. Are his parents military? Why does he walk like that? He seems so old. Mature. He’s cute, I wonder if he has a girlfriend. Or a boyfriend - you saw his pen._

Students whispered back and forth. In the hallways, in their classrooms, in the gym, and even in the library. No place, however, were the questions and assumptions more prevalent than the lunch room. It was and would always be the ultimate breeding ground for middle school gossip.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you think should happen next and any opinions that you have on the fic so far! <3


	6. Pickled Asparagus, Fermented Remorse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Number Five goes to lunch and art class. Neither are as bad as he thinks they will be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is one is a bit longer than my others, but the first half wasn't long enough to stand on its own. Anyways, here you go! I hope you like it.

Number Five stood outside the door of the lunch room. He debated whether or not he could avoid going in, considered other options. Perhaps he could go to the library - though he didn’t know where it was and it felt unethical to eat in a room that was dedicated to literature when there was a designated eating place - it was different than when he had lived in one. At that time, it was acceptable, because there were no other options. Here that was not the case.

He stepped in and scanned the room with a quick, analytical eye - looking for an empty table. Five couldn’t be bothered with these children, despite the fact that they, and his future doctorate, were the reason he was there in the first place. Maybe he could transfer to a high school. People were older and more mature there, right? All the same, he preferred not to sit with any of them. Today had already been more than he had signed up for and it was only halfway over.

At moments like this, he almost missed the apocalypse. In the air, even Number Five could feel some sort of energy. The room itself was full of excitement, wonder and curiosity. This did not extend to himself, but he could somehow tell that everyone in the cafeteria was sharing an emotion. Not-so-quiet whispers were exchanged around him and a few different students were calling out for him. “Number! Come sit with us!” a table of girls in headbands with straight hair called.

He remembered a movie he had watched with Klaus about a high school. There was this new girl and everyone wanted to talk to her and know everything about her. They called it ‘getting the low down’. He didn't know what that meant, but he wondered if maybe that was what was happening to him. Why did they make it their business to know who he was?

Another table seemed to be expressing interest in him as well. They were a bit more eccentric looking. A lot of them had dyed hair, while others had glasses and shirts with graphic designs. Almost all of them looked greasy - like they made a point of not showering. The girl from English class with the obnoxiously red hair was there. In fact, she was the one calling for him. “It was cool what you did earlier, man! You really showed Gordam who’s boss!” she shouted.

Five ignored them as well. He sat down at the most empty table he could find. It only had one student - a skinny, dull-looking guy. It was obvious he had no friends, or at least that no one was coming to sit with him, because he had headphones over his ears and was reading a book. The Outsiders, which meant he was likely in Five’s English class.

He filed the information away in the back of his mind, though he doubted it would ever come up since he didn’t plan on talking to him. Five pulled out the lunch that Grace had packed for him and laid it out on the table. She had given him far more than he needed, as she had packed three of his favorite lunches from childhood into one bag.

A seaweed-sardine sandwich with a can of V8 juice and twelve slices of pepperjack cheese, and then a peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich with black licorice, strawberry applesauce and goldfish crackers, plus a whole baked potato, no condiments, pickled asparagus and an oatmeal creme pie. The second two lunches had come with Capri Suns. He wondered if her processor understood that only one of the Capri Suns was necessary, but still - Five couldn’t help but to find it sweet. He even caught himself in a momentary smile.

Number Five put away the pepperjack cheese, the entirety of Lunch #2, save for the licorice, the oatmeal creme pie, and both of the Capri Suns. He left himself with the seaweed-sardine sandwich, a can of V8 juice, black licorice and pickled asparagus. The kid across the table looked at him with a mixture of awe and disgust. He took off his headphones and looked him in the eye. That was the first time they’d really seen each other, and it brought back memories.

_The Bowling Alley._

Kenny saw the kid before him and he remembered everything clearly. This boy had been there on the worst day of his life: his fourteenth birthday. When no one had showed up to his party, even the people he thought were his friends, and when the bowling alley had been attacked by terrifying masked men that looked like something out of a plague-themed horror film.

He had tried to talk to the boy, the only other young person there, and he had told him that he would rather chew off his own foot. Now, here he was - the weird boy from the bowling alley with the gay dads - and now they were sitting together at lunch.

“You’re the new kid?” He asked with surprise. Kenny stared at the boy; he looked the same, but so different. The boy was somehow more intimidating than he had been before. Hollow. Maybe seeing those shooters had messed with his head. Kenny knew it had messed with his. “What are you eating?” He decided not to ask about the bowling alley. It was too deep too soon.

Five looked at the kid. Kenny, he remembered - the one whose birthday coincided with the end of the world. “A seaweed and sardine sandwich, pickled asparagus, tomato juice, and black licorice for dessert. It’s a combination of elements from two of my three favorite school lunches,” he responded to Kenny’s question. Then, he said, “I remember you - from the bowling alley.”

Before they could continue their conversation, a girl with light brown hair approached. She was from the Headband Table, as Five had so aptly named it in his mind. “Hey, Number. You’re new, right? Come sit with us.” She was carrying a turquoise planner and wore more makeup than he had ever seen before. Something about her reminded him of the villain from the movie that he and Klaus had watched - the movie Klaus had told him was educational and would help him to better understand the public school system and its social climate. That was a lie and he was disappointed, but not surprised, when he finally figured out that Klaus was just using him going to school as an excuse to make him watch teenage rom-coms during his Blue Planet time.

“I already got out my lunch, and frankly, I’m a little busy. Sardine sandwiches can be messy and I don’t want to have to move it,” Five excused. This was getting worse by the second. “Could you maybe piss off?” He told the Headband Girl. It wasn’t a question - his lips tight and his voice sharp. She was afraid, but did not back away.

  
The girl with the light brown hair and the headband, Mackenzie Y., saw darkness within the new boy. He was sharp and bitter. Cool. Everything that she wasn’t. While it scared her, she was also fascinated. “It was really brave how you told Mr. Gordam how bad at his job he was,” she commented in a quieter voice. “I wish I could do that.” Mackenzie Y. admitted.

Number Five looked at her and squinted, “I only said what I thought. It’s not my fault that this school is full of cowards. Teachers only deserve respect if they earn it, and that Gordam guy just didn’t make the cut, so I put him in his place.” He took a bite of pickled asparagus and Mackenzie scrunched up her face, while Kenny’s eyes went wide. They looked at each other and seemed to share a thought that Five didn’t understand. He guessed they thought that his meal choice was strange, or something like that, but he brushed it aside.

“I’ll be going. It wasn’t entirely unpleasant meeting you two, though I don’t plan to do it again,” Five speaks and he stands up, puts his leftovers back in his lunch bag, puts on his backpack and walks out of the cafeteria. As he does, the murmurs resume. Like they think he can’t hear when he’s walking. They’re right. He can’t, but only because he chooses to ignore them.

\- - -

Now, Five is in perhaps one of the most unfamiliar and uncomfortable situations he can possibly be in: a middle school art classroom. The teacher is younger, with wispy hair, a waifish build, and a sense of style that reminds him of a mission to the sixties. He once killed a woman who looked much like her because if she had protested then the Vietnam War would have ended before it was supposed to. It was a simple kill, one of his earlier missions.

Back then, he still had compassion for those he took out. Number Five remembered explaining to her what he was required to do and why, telling her about his work, and giving her a chance to reconcile with her God. She had cried for hours, begged him not to pull the trigger. He did anyways. It was unavoidable; if he didn’t, another agent would have.

“Number? Are you here?” Ms. Bishops, the art teacher, called during role. She had a new student in her art class today. Unusual for this time of the year, but according to the email she had received about him, he was a rather unusual child.

The secretary had suspected troubles at home, but had no evidence, and he was remarkably brilliant. She understood troubled kids, she thought, having worked at a group home as an art therapist for a couple of years and growing up with divorced parents. Ms. Bishops thought that maybe she could reach him, which would definitely help his case here, since she had also been informed that he had already caused trouble for Mr. Gordam in the English department.

Ms. Bishops scanned the room and she found the unfamiliar face almost immediately. In the corner, distanced from the other students, sat a dark-haired boy, small but with a face that showed wisdom beyond his years. He had haunted eyes in a way that she rarely saw, even with the more severe abuse cases that she dealt with. Number was in a daze, it seemed, staring off at the wall, though he was roused from his daydream when he heard his name.

Five looked up at Ms. Bishops when she called his name. It was almost difficult, like seeing a ghost, but he swallowed the nausea that came with it and said, “They call me Five.” Despite his inner turmoil, his voice sounded easy and confident. She looked thrown off-guard by this.

“Okay… Five. Welcome to my art class! I don’t know if you did a lot of art before now, but try not to worry too much. We don’t grade on talent, and art is a great way to bring your story to the table. We’re actually working on an identity piece. The idea is to show the class who you are, which is a great first piece for you to start with. We’ll be explaining them to our peers at the end of the week, but if you’re not done yet that’s alright since you’re new!”

Ms. Bishops used her perkiest voice with the hope of putting the young boy at ease. She knew being new was hard. Her family had moved around a lot, and she’d had to go to four different schools in her thirteen year academic career. Not to say that her life had been miserable or that she could relate to what he was going through, spending thirteen years at home and then being thrust into the world of public school - especially with his intelligence - but she wanted to understand, to help. It was why she had become an art teacher.

Number Five did not do art, by any means. He never had and he had always assumed he never would, but this woman looked so much like Anita Marshall that he felt he owed her. For all he knew, he had killed her grandmother. This said, he picked up a pencil and brought his shaky hand to the notebook paper. He was way too sober for this.

His lines were dark and aggressive. Bold, but wavering. He didn’t know how to make them straight, and he had no clue what to draw, so he had started writing formulas. Ms. Bishops had told him that he could brainstorm, practice or sketch if he wanted.

Would math be considered art if he did it in different colors? Maybe he could just write his equation for time travel as small as he could to fit it on the page. That one thing explained him better than anything else, so really it was the best way for him to complete the assignment.

The class went quickly, and the room was quiet. It was perhaps the best part of his day for just that reason. Art class, as awkward as it felt, was like the eye of the hurricane that was a day in a middle school. If only for just forty-five minutes, no one talked to him or asked him personal questions about his life that he didn’t know how to answer.

Five did, however, fear he was becoming soft. Normally, he didn’t even think about the things that he had done. Let alone feel bad for his victims, or show kindness to those who resembled them. Then again, he had never seen someone who had looked like someone that he had executed before. It was unsettling. Not because it was creepy, but because he felt guilt.

Remorse was something he had thought the commission had trained away from him. Not regret, which he certainly still felt, but this … it was something he’d thought he would never feel again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you think should happen next if you have any suggestions! My next chapter is going to be a little more family focused because there's still a lot of unresolved tension there - especially with Diego, Allison, and Five's burnt hand - but after that, or possibly one more home chapter, it'll be back to the school plot.
> 
> I take constructive criticism, so feel free to be honest with me! Thank you for reading! <3


	7. Push and Pushback

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Number Five has had a long day and he just wants to go home, drink, and ignore everyone. He can't even do that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote something entirely different than I originally intended to for this chapter, but I think it turned out better than what I meant to write. Let me know what you think!

The final bell of the day rings and Number Five nearly jumps out of his skin. It’s over, oh God, it’s over. He isn’t unused to pain, but this is a unique plague. It tires him all the way through his bones. He’s weary, despite having plenty food and drink, and he’s on the verge of explosion.

He walked quickly to the door, taking large strides. He was desperate to escape the situation, but kept a confident smirk on his face. Whoever was picking him up, he wanted them to believe that he had handled the day with grace. There was no way Five would admit that one day surrounded by people his biological age had almost broken him. He was stronger than that.

He approached the car, but froze when he saw Allison. Number Five had been hoping for someone things were easier with, like Vanya or Klaus. Today had already been too much. Getting sent out into the hall by Mr. Gordam and finding out that these kids were only just now learning about tectonic plates in science, not to mention having to talk to Kenny From The Bowling Alley at lunch and seeing the face of a woman he killed.

Five did not have the energy to deal with Allison in this moment, but it he didn’t want to stay at the middle school any longer, so he climbed into the passenger seat. “Don’t ask me about my day,” he said sharply. His sister looked at him with an emotion he didn’t understand. Not that he tried. It was probably one of those feelings that she could only feel because she had given birth. Or maybe it was pity, but he was trying to give her the benefit of the doubt.

Allison had watched as Number Five approached the car, saw his feigned confidence, and the way he paused when he saw her. It was painful, knowing that her own little brother didn’t want to talk to her. He was struggling and she could see it. All she wanted to do was help, but every time she tried he was cruel to her. Still, she’d let Vanya slit her throat. Allison could be sympathetic and patient with Five, too.

If he would let her. She knew the kid was more messed up than any of them; he was just afraid to show it. Didn’t want to let someone in and end up getting hurt. Her sister had been like that, too, for a while. “Okay, I won’t… how’s your arm, though?” She stayed facing forward. It was hard not to want to take care of him when she was looking at him. He was so small and she missed Claire so much.

“Just as fine as it was when Diego and Vanya asked. I don’t need taken care of,” Five spoke back, though not as harshly as he had intended to. Allison was trying not to treat him like a child. An improvement for her. “It’s peeling, so I might put something on it. I pick sometimes. A gross habit, I know, but I used to get so bored, and it’s less disgusting than a lot of the other things I’ve done.” As easy as his tone sounded, there was a bit of tenderness to it. Dismissive, yet somber.

His sister tried not to smile, but she failed. The Hollywood Superstar, professional liar, couldn’t repress the surge of serendipitous joy that she felt whenever she got a moment of authenticity from Five. It made her think that maybe she had a chance of helping him be normal, “Okay. That’s a good idea.” Maybe normal wasn’t the word she meant. What she really wanted was for her little brother to be happy, to be able to give and receive love.

Admittedly, some of her reasons were selfish. Allison accepted this about herself; she wasn't a selfless person, and she wanted him to learn how to show love so that she knew her brother cared. She was trying to change so she could have more healthy relationships, but it was hard. “You know, Five… I’ve been thinking about what you said yesterday. I think I got so upset because you were right. I miss my daughter, and when I see you I just. I’m sorry… I know you hate it, but I don’t know how to stop.” She glanced at her brother out of the corner of her eye, but tried not to make it obvious.

Five shrugged his shoulders, “That’s what therapy is for. I didn’t tell you to go because I wanted you to get your daughter back. I did it so you’d stop acting like I was your six year old. “ Really. That was all it was. She had been irritating him, so he’d offered a solution. It wasn’t because of that tinge of warmth he felt when he watched her talk to her daughter on the phone, or because he wanted to meet his niece. He wasn’t that kind of person. Not anymore.

The rest of the ride was quiet, but in a way that was pleasant. There was no more anxiety in the air, very little left unsaid. Allison turned up the music and looked out the mirror at the sun. It was shining just for them, she could have sworn. Today was a good day, and when she got home she would be calling up a therapist so that she could work on getting Claire back.

\- - -

Number Five walked in the door and immediately threw his backpack down in the foyer. He rummaged through it and grabbed his lunch bag, which he tossed in the fridge, before he yanked off his shoes. It had been a long, hard day.

He started to walk over to the bar, like he usually did whenever he was bored or feeling any sort of emotion. Negative or otherwise. Then, he stopped right in front of it. How different did he want to be from his old self? Would this negate his progress from that day? Did he even care?

The answer, clear as day, was ‘no’. Five did not care that having a drink went against his accomplishments from that day. He was tired, and he had felt too much in the span of the last thirty-six hours. He was living a life that was not his own, and that, he thought, was something that he could drink to. A feeling most could understand. He raised his glass in an an imaginary, wordless toast and took a big gulp. It burned his throat.

Everything was different in this body. His vessel wasn’t what it was supposed to be. Couldn’t handle what it was supposed to. This body had yet to reach its prime. When he was in his late twenties, things had been easier. He’d been bigger, stronger, and able to hold his liquor. Back then, he could take anything the world threw at him.

When he was twenty-seven, he didn’t have to go to middle school and spend his entire day talking to thirteen and fourteen year olds with brains the size of peas. He finished his glass and looked at the clock. It was only four-thirty in the afternoon. Too late for a nap, too early to have dinner and go to bed.

Five crossed his arms and laid his head on the bar. Before he knew what was happening, he was in another world. It was dark and dusty, but hot. White ash floated through the air. His skin might as well have been melting off his body, and the world laid heavy on his shoulders. Or maybe that was the weight of his wagon. He looked back at its contents.

A stack of books, some canned food, and… Delores. He missed her more than he knew how to say. Five remembered the cold nights they’d spent together with no cover, the way he’d held her in his arms and swayed in circles. The blouse he had found her just for that night. How shy she was, how insecure. The way she had wanted to surprise him with it, had told him to close his eyes while he’d gingerly helped her with the button in the back.

Back then, they’d still been getting to know each other. She didn’t feel as comfortable with him yet. He was still young, only nineteen, and he didn’t know how to talk to women. Delores had been patient with him. More so than he deserved, looking back on it.

Probably because she was a figment of his imagination. The mannequin was real, but… the feelings, thoughts and personality he had put into her were just a coping mechanism. That was why she dealt with him, no matter how frustrating he was. At least she was conscientious, kind. A voice of reason, someone who never lied to him. Almost too perfect.

Ultimately, Delores had been more like a mom on an old TV show than someone he could have a healthy romantic relationship with. She’d been by his side, listened to him complain bitterly, and had occasionally nagged in response. Still, she had understood him, and he was human. He wanted someone to get him, so he made up someone who did. “Five?” He heard, but he dismissed it. Delores wasn't here. She was at Gimbel Brother's Department Store.

“Five? Wake up. You’re going to drink yourself to death at this rate.” The voice was louder and deeper than Delores’. In fact, it almost sounded like… Luther?

Luther was standing a couple of feet back from the bar. He had been for a few minutes. Watching. He listened as his brother mumbled to himself, words that he couldn’t understand. Finally, he got a response, though it was more of a murmur than anything else. “Not asleep…”

He decided to sit down at the bar as well and he looked over at Five. God, he was so little. Someone that small shouldn’t be drinking at all. Let alone like he did. Klaus had started when they were twelve, but that was different. It was Number Four, and they’d all been little then. Plus Klaus had been taller. He hadn’t seemed as small. “You need to stop drinking.”

Luther was worried about his brother. They didn’t talk much, but he remembered a few moments with Five that would haunt him forever. The key moment was when Five had been in that stolen plumbing van and Luther had been banging on the window, trying to get in, but Five had been in another world. The kid had looked so scared, so sad, then had just snapped out of it. He knew that it was a sign of a deeper issue that he didn’t know anything about. He was messed up, though. Even Luther could see that much, so he started talking. Tried to relate.

“Look, I know what we’ve been through isn’t really the same, but if you think about it… I think we have more in common than you realize. We’ve both been isolated from the people we care about, and we both live in bodies that aren’t the ones we belong in. Yours is your own fault and mine’s dad’s, but that’s not the point. I guess what I’m trying to tell you that I know how you feel. It’s hard to be stuck when everyone else has moved on without you, but I’m still here, buddy.”

Five responds nothing like Luther expects, but since when has he ever been predictable? His brother, the one who never took any interest in him, the one who tried to make saving the world about his four years on the moon, was trying to have a heart-to-heart with him. Now? After everything that’s happened? And he’s blaming him for being stuck in this body? _I’d like to see him successfully time-travel from the Kennedy Assassination to 2019_ , Five thinks.

“I am nothing like you,” he snarls as he sits up. “I was gone for forty-five years and the man you idolize wrote that it was no great loss. He didn’t look for me, didn’t care where I was. Surely even you know that the portrait wasn’t because he wanted to remember me. It was so no one else stepped out of line. I was the example of what not to be.”

“Jesus, Luther. He sent you to the moon. So what? Sure, it must not have been fun for you, but four years? That’s nothing. You don’t understand because you’re still busy kissing the ass of a dead man who did nothing for you! If anyone’s at fault for the body you’re in it’s you. Because you stuck with that old man. You never thought for yourself. Grow up. You’re thirty. It’s not about your dad anymore. It’s about what you do with your damn life. I grew up, and none of you even noticed! I put my issues aside and saved the world - without so much as a thank you. Because it wasn’t about me. It was about you messed up, incompetent assholes.”

 _He’s just a kid. He’s just a kid. Don’t punch him._  Luther restrained himself physically, but the words still gushed out of him and he stood up, making himself look even bigger than he already was. “You think you know everything, don’t you? Five, you have this idea in your head that we’re all stupid. All blind. We know why you came back to save the world. You’re just like the rest of us. Still caught up in who you were as a kid! All you want is to prove that you’re smart, that you’re better than the rest of us! That’s the real reason you came back. Just to prove you could. But you know what? Dad was right. It wasn’t a great loss. We were a better team without you.”

He clenched his fists and pursed his lips. “You left us, and it hurt, but then you just tried to act like it never happened. You don’t even care that you hurt everyone, because you get to prove how smart you are… yet again… and the only reason any of this ever happened was because you were a stupid kid who tried to do something you couldn’t. All you know how to do is push, and you’re still doing it!” Luther shouted at Five.

He knew it wasn’t fair, knew only half of it was true, and yes, he even knew that it wasn’t right to go out of his way to hurt his brother like that, but it had felt so good. The reaction he got, however, made him feel worse than he had ever felt. It wasn’t emotional, wasn’t angry… it was absolutely nothing. Five had just stood up, gone behind the bar, and gotten another drink. Like he was totally unbothered. Until Luther noticed that he wasn’t.

There was a gleam to Number Five’s eyes. Subtle, but present. His face was red and he breathed heavily. This wasn’t anger, though. Luther had seen that. It was different. Was his brother… crying? No, but almost. The boy’s voice shook a little bit. “I don’t try to be like that,” was all he said. Simple, quiet. Then he retreated up the stairs. He didn’t even bother taking his drink.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are no villains in this story. Just messed up, angry kids. Some of them in grown up bodies, some not. 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this chapter! I'm sorry if anyone seems out of character to you. I just wrote what felt natural.
> 
> I took some of your suggestions, and some I'll be using later, but shoutout to everyone who has commented and told me what they wanted to see! I write these chapters day by day, so your recommendations really do carry weight and I appreciate each and every one of them. Your comments keep me writing 💞


	8. More Unreal Than A Flying Eiffel Tower

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A family dinner goes awry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I didn't update yesterday! Here you go, though. All the living siblings have dialogue in this chapter, and I plan to write Ben into the next one. 🤞

Five didn’t come down for dinner that night, and everyone noticed. The table was quiet and tense, with two of the once-present seven siblings not there. Well, Ben was there, but only Klaus knew that. They sat in the same seats that they had as children, and for the first time since they had moved in almost two months ago, the meal was a silent affair.

Someone finally broke up the sound of metal on glass. Vanya, of all people, was the one who had given voice to what they were all, or almost all, thinking. “I guess Five really had a rough first day. He hasn’t missed dinner since he came back…”

Luther looked down at his plate and shook his head, “He and I kind of got into it when I saw him drinking after school today… I took it a little too far. He’s probably avoiding me.” It was hard to admit, that he was even partially at fault for the situation, but he knew he needed to be honest. Luther didn’t want to be someone who lied to his family. They’d kept too many secrets from each other for way too long, and he knew he couldn’t perpetuate that.

“No. He’s avoiding me, Luther. Stop making this about you. I tried to check up on him this morning when he burnt his hand and it really upset him. He hates when I treat him like a kid, but I did it this morning, and of course he snapped… the little bastard even brought up Eudora,” Diego said with just a hint of residual anger in his voice at the memory of the incident.

Allison looked at both of them with an expression that made them feel terribly about themselves… disappointment. The most valuable parenting tactic. It worked even on grown men. Especially Diego, because he was so close with his mom, and Luther because of his attachment to their father. “You two can’t talk to Five like you can the rest of us. You know that! He might say he’s old, but he’s not. No matter how long he’s been alive. He’s been through so much. Of course little things are going to set him off! He’s not used to people.”

The look on her face as she met the eyes of three of her brothers and her sister shifted to one of utter disbelief. “I mean, did you really think that that was okay? What did you even say to him? You know you can’t yell at him. It’s hard enough to get him to open up as it is. I had a moment with him this afternoon, and you’re going to ruin it. He gave me advice, and I swear, for just a moment, I saw him smile for real. He looked young, and happy. Like a real person instead of a robot.”

Allison regretted that last sentence before she even said it. She saw the way Diego’s shoulders tensed up and she felt the retaliation coming before he even opened his mouth. “You shut up about Mom! She has feelings, Allison!” He shouted.

“She loves us, and she tells us all the time! When she talks, I know it’s real. Mom’s never lied to us or hurt us. Not like you. You’re just jealous because her kids actually want to be around her! Unlike yours.” Diego watched as his sister froze and her jaw started to tremble. Had he taken it too far? Had he done to her what Five had done to him this morning? This was going all wrong, but it was too late to change things. He’d said something he couldn’t take back and ruined something good. Just like with Eudora.

“I’m sorry, Diego… I didn’t mean it like that. I should have thought more; I just meant that he seemed almost like the boy we knew before all this. For just a second. That was wrong of me, though. That expression isn’t something I should use here.” Of course, Allison would be the one to apologize when she wasn’t at fault. Something about it made him angry, but it was a quiet, bubbling white rage. He seethed below the surface, but lowered his shoulders.

“You know how I get about Mom,” Diego conceded. It was the closest thing he could muster to an apology. “But I didn’t say anything to Five. Not really, anyways. All I did was call him a nickname and use a term of endearment. Then he attacked.” He shrugged sadly.

Vanya had been watching as everyone lost their minds on each other. Her family couldn’t have a nice dinner, could they? Of course not. She’d been foolish to hope. She should have seen this coming. “He’s never been like that with me.” Okay, maybe that wasn’t the best response, but it was really a shock to her to find that Five could be vicious to his own family like that.

He’d been brutal to their father, but that was different. They’d all hated him. This wasn’t normal, even in their family. Everyone knew that Eudora was a soft spot for Diego, and they didn’t touch that. No matter how mad at him they were. “Sorry. What happened next?” Vanya asked.

“Not much, really. He took the car and told me to make sure you were ready to take him to school when he got back. I couldn’t stop him because he blinked,” Diego leaned back in his chair, balancing it on the back two legs. If Mom hadn’t been off cleaning the kitchen, she would have gotten onto him for that. Told him he could break his head open if he wasn’t careful.

Klaus had been eating through the entire scenario. Sure, it sucked that Five hadn’t come to dinner, but he was probably just drunk and in bed early or something. It wasn’t much to worry about as far as he was concerned. “It’s not a big deal. The old man doesn’t come to dinner one night and you’re suddenly freaking out? Back when I was a junkie I used to miss meals all the time and you never worried like this,” he said, taking a bite of his chicken leg.

“You’re still a junkie. It’s only been two months, and you’ve even drank since then. With Five, if I remember right. He’s a thirteen year old alcoholic and you keep feeding into it. It doesn’t matter how old he says he is. His body is still thirteen, and you gave alcohol to a minor. Still… you might have a point. He could just be missing dinner because he drank. He said he only had one glass, but honestly? I don’t believe him. Addicts lie,” Luther said. Maybe he was trying to avoid talking about what he’d told the kid that evening, but hey. It wasn’t like he was lying.

Allison saw right through it, though. She always did. The big guy was terrible at misleading her. He didn’t know how to lie, and it was extremely out of character for him to agree with Klaus. “It’s not that simple. We all know Five better than that. This is the one time of the day that he’s always sober. He’d never admit it, but I think he missed family dinners when he was gone. Luther, what happened between you two? You said you took it too far. Took what too far?”

The moment Luther had been dreading had arrived. He had to tell them what he’d said to his little brother. Hopefully they understood, saw his side of things, but he had a strange feeling that they wouldn’t. “Well, he was at the bar with his head down. I thought he was asleep at first, and he was mumbling. I don’t know what about. I started talking to him, you know, when I realized he was awake. Told him not to drink so much.”

He looked down at his plate before he continued to talk, “I said I was there for him, and I explained how I understood what he was going through with his body and being alone. He got pissed and yelled at me. I don’t know why. I was just trying to help. So I yelled back.”

Klaus laughed aloud when he heard this. Everyone else obviously thought that the moment was serious, but there really was a sense of hilarity in it all. No one talked to Five like that. Everyone was too scared to. He was a creepy little guy. Even more so than Klaus himself, and far more intimidating.

“What? You have to admit it’s pretty funny. The idea of the biggest and littlest facing off in an epic Who’s-More-Of-A-Dick Battle. The fight to end all fights.” Allison looked at him and he closed his mouth. Was her real superpower shutting up her brothers? He wouldn’t have been surprised if it was. She was really amazing at it.

Allison sighed to her other three visibly present siblings, “Ignore him. It’s Klaus. There’s nothing funny about shouting at a scared kid who’s going through a lot. What exactly did you say to him? Why did you let him get to you? You know he has issues. You have to be patient with him. Vanya used to be messed up, too, and you snapping at her is exactly why she lost her shit. She cut me open with a violin stick, but I didn’t lash out at her or lock her up. What Five’s been through… none of us can even begin to compare.” She sounded than he had ever heard her, and even stopped to breathe.

“That’s where you went wrong, Luther. Four years on the moon is nothing like what he’s been though. He spent longer alone than any of us have spent alive… and he killed people. Innocent people. Just to be with us. His only true love is a mannequin, and yeah, we can all agree that it’s fucked, but it’s his life. We can’t just expect him to be normal or know how to talk to people after six weeks of therapy. What did you say to him, Luther?” She looked hurt.

Vanya intercepted. She was surprised with herself, not only because she had the courage to get involved in a conversation with this much energy, but also because she was defending Luther. Their relationship was still… on the mend. After everything that had happened.

“Allison, he was upset, too… I don’t know what Five said, but it clearly really hurt him. Maybe we should give him a chance to explain. He’s probably sorry,” she spoke in a calming voice. It was a shock to everyone that she knew how to be such a good mediator. Usually, any form of confrontation triggered her fight-or-flight responses.

While his sister was talking, Klaus noticed a flash of blue light from the other room. He didn’t say anything about it because, well, he knew that no one would listen to him anyways. They still thought of him as who he had been six weeks ago. It was fair, he supposed, but it still stung. He couldn’t see the likely culprit of the flash, but he knew that he was nearby. Probably listening.

“He told me to get over the moon. That it was nothing. That I was just a kissass. He said I needed to shut up about it and about dad, that I didn’t know anything about how he felt and I needed to get over myself. He said it was my fault I look like this… for staying. So I called him a know-it-all,” Luther confessed. It was clear there was something that he wasn’t saying, but he just… couldn’t.

He looked down, “It was worse than that… I think I might have made him cry, but he left before I could see. I don’t know what to do. He’s just a kid. I shouldn’t have yelled at him, no matter how true some of what I said might have been. I guess there’s some things you just shouldn’t say. But I don't have his power. I can't just go back in time and not say it."

Everyone went quiet. The idea of Five crying was the most insane thing that any of them had heard, and they’d grown up with superpowers. Witnessed a near apocalypse. Seen the Eiffel Tower turn into a spaceship. Fought bank robbers. But this, their stoic, calm brother, the only one who hadn’t cried when they'd been given their tattoos, breaking down into tears. It was something they could not understand. The image went beyond their understanding of reality.

As if on queue, someone walked into the room. The very time-travelling ex-assassin they had all been talking about. All five living siblings, and yes, even the dead brother, looked that way. “How much did you hear?” Luther was the first one to say anything. It took him forty-five seconds to find the words.

“He heard everything you just said, Number One,” Klaus responded in an amused tone. This dinner just kept getting more interesting by the moment. Yes, his siblings were fighting, and he would have preferred that they didn’t, but at least he got entertainment with his meal this way.

“Klaus, you knew he was here and you didn’t say anything?” Luther accused in his most aggressive voice. It practically shattered the room. The focus suddenly shifted from Five to him. Usually, he would have appreciated this. Having everyone’s undivided attention. But right now, after what he had said to his little brother, the way everyone had looked at him like he was a monster for shouting at the boy, and now for hollering at Klaus. He hated it. Hated himself for it, even.

“You know my power doesn't work that way. I can't travel back easily - and all you said was the truth... I don’t like when people call me out. Maggie says I get defensive, but I didn't cry. It’s fine. Let’s move on,” Five said with a seemingly easy shrug, but there was something in his voice. It was emotion. A sense of inner turmoil. He didn’t know how to lie. Even Vanya, who had believed him when he had told her that he was crazy and the world wasn’t really ending, knew that Number Five was still upset about what had happened. That he really had cried.

“Look, Five,” Luther took a deep breath. This was going to be hard to say, but he couldn’t avoid it. Not with everyone around and aware of what had happened. “I’m sorry. I messed up. I shouldn’t have talked to you like that; I was just worried about you, but I need to stop trying to - we aren’t the same. I don’t know what it’s like to be where you were. I should have shut up as soon as you snapped. I just sort of lost it. This kind of thing is hard to me. Maybe I should just leave the heart-to-hearts for Allison from now on, huh?” He mumbled, looking down at his large hands.

All Luther got in response was a nod. Like Five hadn’t heard a word he’d said. It wasn’t fair or right. He’d worked hard to say that. It was something he would have never said to anyone else. The kid had gotten more than any of the rest of them had ever gotten from him and all he’d done was… nod? What the actual fuck? He held in his anger.

Number Five had looked on as Luther apologized to him. It was… nice to hear, he supposed, but it didn’t feel real. He’d said it under duress. Not that it was really necessary to apologize anyways. They were grown men, and they both knew that they hadn’t intended to say what they had said. Both of them had meant every word, but they hadn’t meant to give voice to their thoughts. On a logical level, he could respect that, and this wasn’t the place for feelings.

Or so he had told himself as he had verbally written off the incident, as he had nodded to the apology, but he could feel something painful in his stomach. Like an emotional tumor. It gnawed at his new, healthy organs and filled his heart with despair. Hearing what people thought about him had hurt more than he had ever anticipated it to. Did all of his siblings think that? That he had only come back to prove himself? That he was still caught up in his childhood? Worse still… they thought that they were better off without him.

Suddenly, his throat is tight all over again. It shouldn’t matter how they feel about him. He’s accomplished his mission. At least there’s a future now where they can have opinions about him. That should be all he’s thinking about. It’s hard to breathe. He blinks over to the refrigerator and gets out the remainder of his bagged lunch from that day before he turns to leave the room. This is all too much. He needs to get away before they all see something that they shouldn’t. Number Five slowly walks to the cutout that serves as the kitchen door. “I’m eating in my room,” He scarcely manages to choke out before he disappears in a flash of blue.

\- - -

“Am I the only one who thought that was weird?” Klaus spoke with surprising timidity. It was one of the first times he had struggled to speak since he had told Diego about Dave, his love lost. The One That Got Away, though it was more like The One That Was Taken Away.

He was right, though. It was strange. Extremely so. To see Five so obviously not okay? His face had gone pale and his words hadn’t sounded like his own. They were quiet, almost like he was actually upset or something. Surely it couldn’t be. But it was, and they all knew it. Even if they didn't want to acknowledge it.

“Should someone go check on him?” Diego asked, with the obvious caveat that the person who went couldn’t be him because he was still at odds with his brother and didn’t handle emotions well in the first place. “Any volunteers?” He asked the room. No one took him up on it. He might as well have asked them shove their hands into the mouth of a starving lion and pull out its wisdom teeth.

There was silence for almost an entire minute. “I guess I can go,” Klaus ended up saying. He didn’t know why he had said it. He just didn’t like the absence of noise and, well, Five had always bothered to at least ask if he was okay, even if he hadn’t stuck around to hear the answer.

If there was anyone it was okay to be a disaster in front of, it was Klaus. Everyone knew he was a mess. They’d all seen him break down. Maybe it would be a little easier with him than it would be with the rest of them. He couldn’t believe he was thinking about this so much, that he so badly wanted to help. Maybe sober Klaus was a different Klaus after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry you don't get to see as much of everyone's thoughts in this one. It's a little harder to do when there are so many characters in a chapter. 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed it! Things aren't really better yet, but I have a feeling that they might be starting to look up. At least from a character development standpoint. 
> 
> I love feedback, so feel free to comment your thoughts! I'd also love to hear ideas for the next school chapter, which will be the one after next.
> 
> Future Updates -  
> Chapter 9: March 16th.  
> Chapter 10: March 17th.  
> Chapter 11: Soon!! Maybe the 19th!


	9. The Belly of the Beast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Klaus makes an attempt to check in on Five. It's less violent than expected, but not very effective.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a lot later in the day than I planned, but I keep my promises, so here it is! Chapter Nine. 💞

Five had blinked up to his room and sat down on his bed, peeling off his socks and changing into pyjama pants as he took deep breaths. Back when he had been young, Delores had helped him through this kind of thing. She’d told him in the gentle voice that he’d imagined for her how long to hold his breath for, when to release, to breathe slowly. As strange as it all had been, she had been a source of calm and comfort in the wake of it all. When he did the exercises on his own now, he still heard her voice telling him what to do.

It was difficult and his breaths were shallow. He could hear his heart beating and it made his ears throb. Why was he still like this? Feeling this way at his age was immature. He couldn’t act like a child. Not when everyone already thought he was one. He brushed his hair out of his face and swept his index finger across the area under his eyes. _Wet_ , and his face was warm to the touch. It was definitely slightly reddened, and was probably a bit inflamed as well. Again.

Of course this had to happen. Number Five was weak; he was crying for the second time in less than six hours. Saving the world was no big deal, but apparently he couldn’t handle being yelled at by his brother. It was fucked that they didn’t want him there, but it really shouldn’t have mattered to him as much as it did. His chest shouldn’t still be heavy like this.

Did they even know what he had done for them? He’d lived in a world where finding a spider was a delicacy and could be his only meal for days. Poured brandy on injured knees at the age of fourteen and considered that good enough. There had been nights where he had sobbed for so long that he lost consciousness, only to wake up and sob again. It had taken him three days to pull himself off of the dirt and start digging through the rubble to bury his siblings.

He’d chipped his nails, gotten so much stuff under them that he was afraid to look, and covered his fingers in blood, just trying to give them a proper burial. He’d passed out from dehydration while trying to uncover Allison. It had taken him three days to finish the process and he hadn’t stopped to do anything other than piss. Once, he had quit to find water, but that was only after he had passed out. When he realized he couldn’t do anything for them if he died first.

It had been Hell, and he didn’t expect them to thank him, but it would have been nice if they had at least wanted to see him again. If they could accept the new, hardened version of him that they had received and stopped trying to turn him into a little boy again.

At some point during the time he had been lost in his thoughts, someone had knocked on his bedroom door. He hadn’t heard it, had been too busy remembering things that he didn’t want to remember. It was hard to think about. One of the things he drank to forget.

\- - -

Klaus had been standing outside of the bedroom door for what felt like hours. It had been, at most, seven minutes, but he could feel himself growing more worried with every time he called and his brother didn’t answer. “Five! Are you alive in there?” He shouted.

Finally, he got a response. It had been quiet, though. Something he couldn’t hear or understand. Perhaps it had just been his brother talking himself again, but at least he knew he was in his room. “I’m going to come in, okay?” Klaus asked, but didn’t wait for an answer before he turned the doorknob.

What he saw when he opened the door was rather unexpected. Shocking, even. Five was sitting on his bed, hunched over on his knees and it looked like he was shaking. Trembling. Klaus felt a pang in his heart for the kid he saw. It was almost possible to forget who he was, what he’d done. If it weren’t for the look on his face when he had turned his head to face the door. Those dark, horrified eyes - filled with pain and terror - didn't belong to any thirteen year old.

Five looked scared, and that was something Klaus never thought he would see. He had genuinely believed that the figure before him felt no fear. That he’d seen too much to ever be afraid of anything again. To Five, being pursued by assassins was no big deal. What could be so incredibly awful that even his bravest brother was incapacitated by it?

Klaus didn’t dare to get too close to Number Five, so he pulled up a chair and sat a couple of feet away. “What happened? Are you… back there?” He knew that feeling well, being so stuck in a memory that it feels like you’re going through it all over again. It would explain why Five was how he was. It had to be something powerful, to make him like this. He’d probably rather be caught dead than caught breathing heavily with watery eyes, a red face, and shaking limbs.

Number Five unfurled himself so that he sat normally and his legs hung off the bed. “No. Just leave me alone, Klaus,” he said, or tried to say. His voice wavered with every word. “You shouldn’t have come in here.” _Level. Calm. If he thinks you’re upset, he’ll worry and try to stay._ Five ordered internally, but it still didn’t go off according to plan. He just sounded meek. Childish.

Ben looked at Klaus expectantly. “Help him. You know he needs you. He just can’t tell you. Remember those guys from rehab? The ones who wouldn’t let their families visit because they didn’t want anyone to see them like that. He’s like that, kind of.” He had tried to explain, but for once, Klaus didn’t need to be told how to handle the situation.

Klaus eyed his brother’s lunch bag from across the room and he stood up, walked over to it. He rummaged through the bag. Most of it looked gross, but even he remembered that these odd picks were Five’s favorites. “Mom packed you three lunches, huh? She really wanted you to have a good day. Sometimes she doesn’t say things and she just gives food. That’s her way of communicating.” He paused. “At least, that’s what Diego told me…. sandwich or potato?”

Five started to breathe a little bit less frantically when his brother had started speaking. It was noticeable. Like he found comfort in the silence being filled. “Sandwich,” He answered, pulling his legs back up into the bed and crossing them. He still sniffled slightly, but he seemed better than he had, at least. “Give me the applesauce and Capri Sun with it. I’m saving the rest for tomorrow.” His voice was still a little shaky, but at least he felt well enough to boss Klaus around.

He was more than happy to oblige, genuinely relieved to hear his brother talk. That was something he never thought he would be saying to himself. Usually, Five was frustrating. Someone who always talked down to him. Granted, his other siblings did too, and at least he wasn’t singled out by Five. He just treated everyone like they were lesser beings.

It was actually kind of funny, the way people looked at them in the street when Five was the one in command and Klaus just followed along. It was even more amusing to imagine what they were thinking. There were so many possibilities, each more hilarious than the last.

This wasn’t about that, though. This was about Five and how he looked like a petulant child instead of a grown man trapped in the body of a snarky little boy - his usual look. “How about I get you some nice, cool water and then we talk about what happened while you eat, huh?” Klaus offered, but in a voice that indicated he wouldn’t leave him alone until he agreed.

\- - -

For once, Five didn’t have the energy to chase Klaus away, and not three minutes later he was holding a small plastic cup with Berlioz from The Aristocats on it. Slowly, he sipped from the vessel.

“Sorry, I would have given you Marie, but she’s mine - and you always were the fiesty one of our bunch,” Klaus teased. He was trying to lighten the mood, but it clearly wasn’t working, as his brother had said nothing in response and just continued to nurse the refreshing liquid from the cup.

Five held the cup tightly with both hands. It was a thick plastic, but it still bent slightly with the firmness in his grip. “That’s a bad sign. It means he’s still tense,” Ben warned.

He took Ben’s advice to heart, for once, and he decided to prod again, but not until there had been five more minutes of silence. Klaus had wanted to at least give his brother the chance to decide to open up on his own. “Hey, tell me what’s up. I want to help. It’s not pity. You’ve just put up with my bullshit enough… I thought maybe this time I could put up with yours.”

“It’s not bullshit, Klaus,” Number Five had snapped, glaring at his brother. “You don’t get to say that. You don’t even know what it is.” He squeezed the cup so tightly that it nearly folded in half. Water splashed on the fresh sheets and his legs. His hands were... shaking?

Klaus frowned and reached in, “Okay, you’re right. Why don’t you tell me?” This was an impossibly difficult situation, and for a moment he regretted volunteering to be in it. He couldn’t imagine Luther or Diego handling it, and Allison would have over-mothered him, while Vanya would probably be crying. It was weird, but he was probably the most qualified to deal with this. At least he had Ben. Speaking of his dead brother, he glanced back, silently pleading for help. His arm was still extended toward Five, but he didn’t know what to do with it.

Ben gave his brother a sympathetic look. Or maybe it was an empathetic look, since he’d been through the same trying to look after him. Especially when he’d first returned from the war. “Okay, take the cup and put it somewhere else. Convincing him to get out of bed is definitely a good idea. If you can get him to change, that’s a plus. Maybe get him more water while he does, and don’t fill the cup as high this time. Just in case,” He recommended.

Klaus hesitantly put his hand on the top of the cup and started to pull it out of the guy’s clammy little hands. This went surprisingly easily, as his grip on the piece of plastic had apparently gotten weaker. “Actually, how about we get you changed first? Just new pants. Maybe a t-shirt. You look too warm. I can get something out for you if you want, and then I can go get new sheets while you change. Give you some privacy, you know.” It felt awkward, but he did care.

It was just hard to see Five like this. He had always been a rock compared to the rest of them. Unchanging, invulnerable. He didn’t cry, shake, or scream. Sure, he raised his voice, but only because the rest of them were stupid and he got annoyed with them. Lately, he’d been a little volatile, saying hurtful things that not even he normally would. Still, this was so far outside of the realm of the expected that he hadn’t thought about what he would do it if happened. Not that Klaus did much thinking ahead or planning anyways.

It wrenched his heart. He didn’t like to know that the strongest person he knew, the strongest one that hadn’t been ripped from his life by the cold fingers of death, that was, experienced so much pain. How did he hide it? None of them had realized how bad it was. They thought he had issues, but they hadn’t even imagined that he would blubber alone up in his bedroom.

Five had just nodded. It was almost too easy, and this fact scared Klaus. Was he really so drained that he couldn't even be a pain in the ass? He’d never agreed this easily to what someone else had told him - not even before he’d disappeared. Number Five had always been the impossible one.

Klaus walked over to his brother’s now full wardrobe. The man still hadn’t bought t-shirts. For whatever reason, he’d thought that they were too childish. They’d squabbled about it, Klaus making the point that many adults, including himself, wore them. Five had rolled his eyes, arguing that Klaus wasn’t exactly an adult. It had only been a couple of days since then, but he really missed it already. The easy banter. Five hadn't smiled genuinely or laughed at all, but it had still been much better than this.

He ended up grabbing some lighter weight flannel pants. They were blue and black plaid with thin lines and small ankles. It was something he wouldn’t have minded wearing himself, if he hadn’t thought that plaid was something reserved exclusively for old men - and Five owning these had only reaffirmed that belief. “Okay, I’m going to grab you a t-shirt from my room. Don’t worry. It won’t smell, and you’ll be surprised how comfortable it is,” he said aloud, though he had a suspicion that Five wasn’t listening as he watched him poke at his little container of strawberry applesauce. Klaus walked out, asking Ben in a whisper to keep a lookout on his brother.

\- - -

Klaus walked into his small, crowded room. It was well-lived, not dirty. Maybe dirty, but comfortably so. The room gave him a sense of security, crammed with posters, clothes and knickknacks. It was better than Five’s, that was for sure. He used the room for its walls and to sleep, and that was about it. The walls were ‘decorated’ with confusing formulas, but the rest of it was empty, save for the newly filled wardrobe, the backpack next to the desk, and the glass eye that he still kept out on the desk, next to that scrawled-in copy of Vanya’s book.

It made him sad if he thought about it too much. The dude was really messed up, hadn’t even had enough of a sense of normalcy to want to make his room a place of comfort. Klaus wondered if there was more to that, some reason for it, but he was no psychoanalyst.

“Okay, okay… I’m looking for a shirt.” He picked up the first thing he saw and immediately discarded it. This wasn’t a black mesh sort of situation. It wasn’t that comfortable, and, well, Five looked thirteen so it would probably be creepy to give it to him. The next thing he grabbed was his vibrantly colored beachy tank top. His brother would never wear that.

Finally, he found a navy blue shirt that had once had the clever slogan _I’m Here, I’m Queer, Give Me A Beer_ on it, but now just had a few white flakes where words had once been - and maybe two legible letters. Clearly old, but he sniffed it and it didn’t seem to smell. Other than maybe a little stale. If shirts could be stale. All the same, it would be better than a long-sleeved shirt. Five looked sweaty in a way that he’d only seen him look once, when he’d had that infected gunshot and was running a fever as a result of it - so yeah, Klaus worried. The guy was burning up!

Klaus stopped at the linen closet on the way back and grabbed Five a pile of freshly laundered sheets. He didn’t exactly know how to put them on, but he’d figure it out. Maybe Ben knew.

\- - -

When Klaus came back, Five was asleep with all the blankets bunched up at the bottom of the bed. He put the new sheets, t-shirt and pants on the top of his dresser, cleaned up his dinner, got him some more water, and felt his forehead. Yuck. It was a cold sweat, though. No fever.

He turned out the lights and turned on the ceiling fan to help him cool down, then left him be. At least Five knew he could talk to him if he needed to, though he probably never would. Had avoiding the conversation by sleeping been that sneaky little bastard’s plan all along? If so, clever. He laughed to himself and headed downstairs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another longer chapter! I hope you all enjoyed. It wasn't exactly what I expected it to be, but it felt too soon for him to really open up. We did get to see a lot of vulnerability still, though. 
> 
> Let me know what you think! Next chapter is going to have a little bit more home stuff, but it'll still be a back to school chapter - unless something changes.
> 
> Thanks for reading!! Chapter Ten comes tomorrow! 💓


	10. One Mile

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Number Five makes up with Diego, kind of, and starts his second day at middle school.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, here we are! It's even later in the day than the last chapter, but I tried and it's at least here on the day I said it would be. I hope you enjoy this more lighthearted chapter!

Five woke up on slightly damp sheets in almost dry pants, and he was shivering. He looked around the dark room, but couldn’t really see anything. He reached for his socks, but they weren’t where he had left them, so he made his way over to the door barefoot. The light flickered on and he squinted. It was too bright.

He scanned the room. It looked different than it had when he had fallen asleep. Wait, when had he fallen asleep? Five tried to remember the time, but all he could recall was that it had been far too early. Klaus had been going to get him something to change into and… Klaus. He’d forgotten until just now that his brother had seen him bleary eyed.

Damn it. He was going to tell the rest of them and they were going to treat him like a nine year old. The whole thirteen year old thing was bad enough, and then he’d done that? He shook the terrible thought from his mind. Maggie had told him that shaming himself for vulnerability only made him feel more emotional, and she was probably right. She did have a degree, after all.

He stripped his bed and managed to put on the new sheets after a few minutes of struggling. It didn’t look as nice as when Grace made his bed, but it would do for the rest of the night, he figured. He had hours upon hours before he had to be back up for school. God, he couldn’t believe he was really doing this whole school thing.

Was it worth going through all this just to go to a top college? Did it even make a difference where he got it from, as long as he got the doctorate? Of course it did, but in this moment he really wished that it didn’t so that he could just move on, get his GED, and start college.

He laid his blankets out smoothly and went to change. As much of an idiot as he was, Klaus had a point. The sweater and not-quite-dry pants didn’t work well for sleeping. Five had just been so tired last night that it hadn’t mattered. He didn’t feel like rummaging, so he wore what his brother had left out for him. The pants were soft and not wet, so it was quite an improvement.

The shirt, however, really surprised him. It was too big, which he usually hated. Typically, it felt like a painful reminder that his body was too small. This, however, despite its strange, airy smell, felt secure and warm. Like wearing a blanket, even though it was made of cotton.

Five turned down the covers, light and fan before he got back into his bed. He sat up for a few minutes, drinking the room temperature water. When he no longer felt parched, he laid down, pulled the covers over his shoulders, and easily fell into the abyss.

\- - -

The next time Five awoke, it was to the sound of his alarm clock - likely the most obnoxious noise that he had ever heard. Quickly and easily, he sat up, shut it off, and lifted himself from the mattress. He ambled down the stairs to brew a pot of coffee before his shower.

When he walked into the kitchen, however, he saw Grace and Diego already up and his brother was chatting to her while she made him eggs and what smelled like bacon. He quietly sat down and listened in. They seemed so chipper and engaged, and this was probably the most upbeat he had ever heard the broodier of his brothers sound.

Grace turned to him, “Good morning, Number Five! Your lunch is on the counter and coffee will be ready in forty-seven seconds. Breakfast has two and a half minutes.” She turned around and waited for the coffee to be finished, then delivered a cup to her son. The cup said _I’m Not 13, I’m 30 with 28 Years of Experience_ \- one of his siblings had ordered it for him as a joke.

He suspected Klaus as the culprit, but found that he really didn’t mind. The cup had a nice hand-feel, which was all that mattered to him. Over the course of the last three weeks, eight coffee cups with what were supposed to be comedic sayings about being an old man on them had appeared in the house, and Five had begun to grow used to it. Diego still snickered when he noticed he cup, though.

"Thanks Grace," He mumbled as he sighed at the vigilante and took a large drink of the hot, bitter liquid. Finally, this house had rich, flavorful coffee. “Are you over yesterday?” Five asked, glancing at his burn. It looked worse than it had the day before, bright red, with a big blister on the top of his hand.

Diego's expression quickly turned from comedic laughter to a frown when he saw the burn, but he knew better than to say something again. “Yeah, man. I get it. You were having a bad day and you hadn’t had any coffee.” It wasn’t easy to forgive him, but after hearing his voice last night, he had developed a little bit of a soft spot for the asshole. “How about I drive you to school today so Vanya can sleep in?”

Five stood up, “As long as you don’t drive like an idiot.” For him, this was being agreeable - at least, as far as Diego was concerned. He looked at the non-thirteen year old and he noticed that something was… off. He was wearing a long t-shirt that clearly wasn’t his with his pyjama pants.

It was all Diego could do to suppress the visible signs of the affection that he felt for his brother in this moment. Anything he did would be seen as demeaning. If he was honest with himself, his current thoughts kind of were. Not in an extreme way, but he definitely knew that Five would hate the notion of being seen as adorable. He’d probably launch into his usual speech: _I’m a hardened killer, Diego. It’s not cute. I could take you out within ten seconds if I needed to. Don’t test me._

The next thing Diego knew, a plate was missing from the counter and the dude in question had vanished from the room in a flash of brilliant blue light. He shrugged and pulled out a knife, which he used to gently cut an incision in the top of his egg so that he could dip his bacon in its yellow liquid middle.

\- - -

Here he was. Day two of middle school. He’d already gotten through English, having spent a generous seven minutes on the quiz that he’d assigned about the book that day. It was painfully simple, so he proceeded to spend the rest of the period writing in his notebook again.

The children in that class had looked at him strangely when he had turned in his quiz. Apparently, they didn’t have the memory or capacity to understand it. That or they were all just dreadfully slow writers. They’d started whispering again, and Mr. Gordam had scolded them, but they still hadn’t stopped. Apparently, Number Five was fascinating to their small minds. So much so that they had to talk about him unceasingly for days. Oh, if only they knew.

At least his second class was cathartic. Sure, it was an absolute minefield full of teenage drivel, but he was also easily able to avoid talking to his so-called peers, and he was pretty sure he would occasionally be able to kick ass as a part of the curriculum. In no realm of possibility should gym class have been something that he looked forward to. He’d hated the physical aspects of his training when he was young and loved the book learning, but now, when he knew all that they were teaching him, a class where there was nothing to learn had gained appeal.

The locker room situation had been dreadfully uncomfortable, admittedly, but he had just waited to use them until everyone else had already changed. He wasn’t used to the idea of changing in a room with other people, or of gendered bathrooms. In the apocalypse, there hadn’t even been plumbing, let alone bathrooms or other people to share them with - and The Commission had had private stalls in one large, gender-inclusive bathroom per floor. He certainly wasn’t going to let these strangers see his ass, and that was all there was to be said about it.

When Five emerged, a large bald man whose build reminded him of Luther’s stood in the middle of the room. He looked angry; he was tall and red-faced. Any ordinary thirteen year old - hell, any thirteen year old at all - would have been terrified of him. The man made himself seem even larger than he was, unlike Luther. He was proud of his physical prowess and wore his size like a badge of honor. This man had the look of someone who got joy out of squishing children like bugs. Luckily, Five wasn't a child. He had just looked at him disinterestedly and walked past.

The first day, Coach Kelly had given the new kid some leeway. Being out late was acceptable when he hadn’t known his locker combination, but that was no longer the case. He wasn’t going to give special treatment to the boy just because his parents had sheltered him and as a result he was insecure about his scrawny little body and wasn’t used to being around other people. He’d have to get over it and come out of the locker room on time like the rest of the students did - or he would face the consequences. It was only fair.

When the allotted locker room time after the bell, which was five minutes, had passed, he walked up in front of the bleachers where the students sat and he just stood there. Arms crossed. With every second that passed, his scowl only grew darker, and his face went more red. The new boy had finally come out, and he had yelled, “Five! I want a mile!” The boy had just shrugged his shoulders and sat down as if nothing had happened.

“I said I wanted a mile!” Coach Kelly hollered, pointing at the little shit. This kid thought his hair gel put him above everyone else or something, apparently - that or he just couldn’t follow the instructions. Either way, the coach wasn’t having any more of it. “Run the damn mile!”

“Oh, you could have just said so. I don’t mind to do it, but you have to use your words. I’m not a mind reader,” Number Five said in what was probably the most condescending tone that Coach Kelly had ever heard. God, he wanted to throttle this kid. Still, the boy did stand up and start doing…. stretches? What the fuck kind of summer camp bullshit did he think this was?

“Watch your attitude, young man! I have every right to add another mile!” His voice boomed. The other students had all flinched, and some had even physically shrunken back in the bleachers or grabbed onto the shoulders of their classmates.

The boy in question, however, had reacted in no such way. In fact, he had scarcely reacted at all. He’d just finished his rather brief set of stretches and looked over at the coach with an easygoing, confident smirk, “Whatever you see fit, coach.”

Arrogance practically pulsated off of him and if it hadn’t been illegal, Coach Kelly knew he would have punched this self-important little bastard already. He wondered just how strictly that law was enforced, actually. Would the school do anything about it if he did - and was this the kind of kid that reported stuff to his parents? God, he hated his job so much.

At some point while he had been fuming, the boy had started running and - holy shit, he was fast. He didn’t seem to break a sweat, but he could have just been showing off. Number Five seemed like the type to try to prove himself just because he could.

Over halfway through the mile and he was still impressive. If he kept this pace, he would probably come pretty close to the school’s record time. Where the Hell had this talent been yesterday? The kid didn’t even seem to be working hard for it.

Damn. He’d really kept it up all the way through. Maybe Coach Kelly should have paid closer attention to the boy yesterday, had a recruiter’s eye on him. Could he really handle any more time with this kid, though - or would his presence just fracture the team he had carefully built and destroy their respect for him? “You can join the rest of the class now,” he said firmly.

Number Five wiped his shockingly dry brow. He hadn’t had a run like that in a while - he really should have been keeping up with his routine better. It wasn’t like The Commission couldn’t come for him still, was it? Coach Kelly was kind of a dick, but still - the run had done him good.

He went and stood next to the bleachers while he waited to hear the day’s activity. Hopefully it was something angry and not some yoga bullshit, or just pointless exercises. “Okay, class… welcome to the day you’ve all been waiting for. Dodgeball Day! I’m assigning teams. Don’t bother standing close to your friends. It won’t make a difference. I’m going on ability.”

Five plays hard, treats it as life or death. He’s competitive, and this game, in a strange way, flashes him back to his childhood. His need to succeed, to be better than even his teammates, shines today, and it makes him look like an asshole. Probably because he is one. Two boys and a girl end up in the nurse’s office as a result of his aggressive playing.

He only gets out once, and when he does he argues with the coach. It’s futile, and he’s raging mad by the end of it. Luckily, his time out of the game only lasts about thirty seconds - until his team flounders without him and ends up losing. The games where Five stays in are the ones that they win, and he feels a sense of kinship with the fools on his team. Even Kenny, who sucks.

A part of Five hates himself for getting so high off of this game. It’s just another in a series of childish acts he’s committed in the last forty-eight hours. Being around children is really starting to mess with his head, isn’t it? All the same, it’s nice to have somewhere to put all of his anger… he’d been feeling so much tension for so long, and he had nowhere to direct it with the apocalypse averted. It was significantly better than fighting with his siblings and obsessing needlessly about The Commission coming back for him and his family.

\- - -

As he sits, contemplating his own paranoia, Coach Kelly approaches him. “You’re quick and you’ve got a good arm. Have you thought about playing baseball?” The rest of his class is changing, and he’s just there… on the bleachers. Staring off at the wall.

“What?” Number Five asked, having only just been disturbed from his thoughts. The coach apparently thought that that was his reaction to whatever had said, because the large, aggressive man had stood up and started to walk away.

“Think about it, alright little man? I think you’d be a valuable asset to the team.” He has no idea what just happened. Had he just been propositioned for a sports team? Surely not.

“Don’t call me little man,” He responded with a glare.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you think! Should Five join a sports team - and is there anything else you would like to see in the fic? I have a couple of future storylines planned out, but I love recommendations and I can definitely find places to work them in. 
> 
> Next Chapter by the 20th! I have a bit of a busier week ahead of me, but I should still be able to update at least a few times this coming week - and after that we should be back to either daily or bi-daily updates. 💓


	11. Life Cycle of A Goldfish

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five has a couple of close calls at school, receives a text, and reads a fascinating book that gives him some perspective on his life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is really late. I'm sorry! I had a super busy week. Hopefully, I'll be able to update a little more consistently next week.

The fourth class of the day, directly prior to lunch, was history. It was probably Number Five’s least favorite of his classes. Not only was it entirely uninteresting because he knew everything about the subject that there was to know, but the information taught to the students was also false. The moment he had heard Mrs. Hollinger say that Christopher Columbus had discovered America, he knew that he wouldn’t be able to tolerate the discrepancies. They weren’t just minor.

Even the common fool knew that Amerigo Vespucci had discovered America, despite the fact that Columbus had landed there first. Often, they even knew the reason for this - that Columbus, the numbskull, had believed that he was in India when he had come to the Americas. The slightly more advanced might have even deduced that the first European to discover America was Leif Eriksson, Viking Explorer. Ultimately, however, they were all wrong.

The first to discover America had actually been The Handler. Not the current Handler, of course - it had been discovered long before her day, long before people were planted there. The Handler’s predecessor, a sentient and highly intelligent goldfish in a bowl that served as a head for a vaguely humanesque android body, had found the land. He had ensured that the Bering Strait Land Bridge would form when it was supposed to, assigning the case to his best case manager, and had even formed a committee on it called The Humanity Expansion Committee. All members had since retired to 1400s Italy, but were consulted on cases occasionally.

\- - -

Mrs. Hollinger stood before her class and began to lecture. She was a gentle-spirited woman and getting on in her years. Talking to a bunch of disinterested children was the last thing that she wanted to do with her days. It would have been different if they’d actually cared what she had to say, but as it were, she was just waiting for retirement and they were all just waiting for the bell to ring so that they could go to lunch. Or so it had been until she got a new student.

This young man, Number, was smart as a whip. He probably knew more than she did, and was qualified to teach the class in all matters except degree. She’d read his paper on British Suffragettes, and it had been truly brilliant. The only problem was that he was always correcting her, and the other students were coming to resent him. It was embarrassing for Mrs. Hollinger, but she tried not to worry too much. Teaching was about educating students as best she could, not about her personal image.At least, that was what she told herself when the snide thirteen year old demolished her in the classroom and had evidence to back himself up memorized.

The boy’d probably have been a good candidate for the debate team if he hadn’t gotten off on such a bad foot with the sponsor, Gordam. To be fair, both were strong personalities. The kind of people that everyone had an opinion about and who had an opinion about everyone. Quickly, at that. She liked both of them, but it was easy to see how either of them could rub someone the wrong way. They took things too seriously - or at least, that was the energy that they gave off. Perhaps the two just had too much in common to get along. Oh well. It was what it was.

In the middle of the second row, Five sat, scrawling quickly and aggressively on a piece of loose leaf notebook paper. This was not unlike the children in the room, who were writing down every word that the Mrs. Hollinger spoke, afraid that they would fail their exams if they didn’t study and memorize everything that their teacher said - it wasn't that they cared what she said, only that they memorized it and got good grades. Five's motives, however, were far different.

Vanya had informed Number Five via text that he was not supposed to tell teachers that they were wrong in front of their other students, that doing so was damaging to their fragile pride. She hadn’t called it fragile, but clearly it was if they couldn’t accept the notion that he was smarter than them and were unable to take criticism. Honestly. What were these people? Thirteen? They all acted so immature. That said, he’d acquiesced and was writing a list of things that Mrs. Hollinger said that were wrong, what had really happened and books where she could find more accurate information. In case she wanted to know more than what he’d told her.

It was tedious, but at least it kept Five busy during the class. He had something to do with his time, though he found his hand starting to hurt - the burn was healing a little more slowly than he had anticipated and the friction of the pen on it was not the most pleasant feeling the world. He was fine, though. A man of his experience was always fine. There was no choice.

A small stack of papers landed on his desk. Three different copies of a piece of paper that requested signatures from he and his parents to go on some kind of trip during school hours. It was called a field trip, and was to happen at some point in what he assumed would be the near future. He hadn’t paid much attention to the contents of the page, instead having focused mostly on whether or not they matched. “There are three of these,” Five announced to the room.

Every student in his immediate vicinity turned to give him the look that he used on his siblings when they said something incredibly stupid. Why were they doing that? He wasn’t an idiot for having received multiple of the same paper. “Pass them back, man,” a tired-looking boy with curly hair said to him, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. If he’d thought about it, it actually kind of was. There were two extra papers and two students behind him with none.

He handed the papers to the girl behind him and placed his paper in the one-inch binder that he had bought for his history class. This was the first time that he had actually utilized it - granted he had only been to the class once before. It seemed that the lecture was over, so Five packed everything except the mistake list into his green backpack. The bell rang and students started to slowly trickle out, chatting among themselves about their pointless little lives. Something about dancing, while others talked about the trip - and a battleground was mentioned?

Five shrugged off the juvenile antics and placed the paper on Mrs. Hollinger’s desk. He had been about to leave when she had beckoned him over, “What’s this about, Number? You made a list of things that I told your classmates that were wrong… You didn’t come off as shy. Are you scared of them calling you a nerd if you show too much interest or something?” The woman talked to him in a sickeningly sweet voice, like he was a nine year old boy or something.

“Not at all. It just seemed inconvenient to have to repeatedly tell you how little you knew when I could save time this way. Now, if you’ll excuse me. I have food to eat,” he said. Just when Mrs. Hollinger had thought that the boy couldn’t get any more bizarre, he had outright told her that she was a terrible, unqualified teacher. So much so, in fact, that she wasn’t even worth his time. She pursed her lips and fought a frown. He was a kid, and things didn’t add up. His intellect, his attitude... and then, most concerning, that burn. There was something going on. _I’ll call home during lunch_ , she decided.

He had simply walked out after speaking, had ignored the woman as she called out. The answer to whatever question she was about to ask was on the list anyways, and she could read. At least, he assumed so. College students had to be able to do that and teachers needed four year degrees, right? Five walked into the cafeteria. Yet again, everyone in the room was full of energy. Maybe that just happened when hundreds of eighth graders were shoved into the same room. It was loud and painfully obnoxious, though, and he wished it would stop.

\- - -

Number Five took a seat at the table he had selected the day before, where Bowling Alley Boy was listening to music and playing on his phone. From time to time, he picked up a piece of peanut butter covered celery and ate it, but his primary focus was clearly his device and not his meal. His brows were furrowed and for some reason, Five actually wanted to know why. The fourteen year old had always seemed to have this unceasingly - and irritatingly - positive energy, despite being quieter than most of the children he had met thus far. Why was he so different today?

Five didn’t have much time to consider it, though, because his contemplative thoughts on Kenny had been interrupted by a very different looking child. The boy who had approached his table from behind was much larger, broader, and carried himself as if he knew his strength. Fascinating for a young teenager. When he and his siblings had been young, even Luther, who had been the most physically powerful of them at the time, hadn’t known what to do with himself or how to hold his body. Seeing an untrained, superpowerless boy hold so much confidence almost impressed him. At least, it might have if the kid’s sureness in himself had been genuine.

For someone who didn’t know how to be around others, Five was remarkably good at reading people. He couldn’t tell how they were feeling or what they were thinking, but he could spot a liar, a facade or a sense of unease and mistrust from a mile away. Something in him always knew when someone wasn’t telling the truth. It was probably his experience as an assassin. He had been highly trained. Rather, had the knowledge of someone who was implanted into his brain - but still, spotting lies was a survival skill of its own. Not that he’d needed it much.

All the same, knowing falsehoods before he even had the chance to see them was something that he had brushed up on. The man had had a lot of time to kill, and there was only so much alcohol that was easy to find, and he’d walked the continent three times. There was nothing to see. No signs of life. He’d scoured the hemisphere for survivors and found nothing. He’d even gone to a few islands, just to be truly sure. After that, he’d resumed using his time improving his mind. Five had never stopped searching for a way home. It had never been about the world, though. He didn’t care that much about the greater good. Ultimately, it had been his family.

He would never tell them, but it had been his family that had made it worthwhile. If it weren’t for them, he would have happily served The Commission for his entire life - assuming he hadn't given up and died in the apocalypse before he'd even been hired. He didn’t love the killing, but he did love the thrill of a job well done. Not-so-secretly, he also loved being the best at something - the undisputed number one, even though his name was Number Five. The respectful title of Mister Five had made him glow - and the fact that he had the potential to climb to the top of the organization had made him beam with pride. He’d been something of a wunderkind, really. It had taken him less than two years to become the best temporal assassin that The Commission had ever had - he'd never missed a shot or failed a mission.

It was probably because of the consequences that failure had had when he was growing up. The nights of micro-jumping until he collapsed, and the effects it had on his body afterwards. There were times when he couldn’t keep food down for days because his insides were too scrambled from time after time of being deconstructed and reconstructed. Times when every texture known to man other than silk made his skin burn because of the dry air of the space-time continuum. Sure, by adulthood, those feelings were almost pleasant. At least, when compared with his dark and painful day-to-day, but the lessons that he had been taught about failure would stay with him forever. They’d hardened him, yet caused him to strive for success.

In that one way, his father had succeeded with him. Reginald had turned him into a machine, and The Handler had used that machine to kill hundreds. She’d been right, too, Five supposed. He had already been a killer, even before he had killed. He’d been a man with no nation, but even more so… he had no conscience. From birth, he had been trained to survive and adapt. It was natural selection, survival of the fittest, and he had won.

The boy Number Five could see out of the corner of his eye tried to seem like he knew the hardships of the world, like he was big and tough, but he was just a clueless kid. Five could see it plain as day. He wondered if others could, too, or if his front was working well for him. Two minutes had passed in silence while he’d been thinking, and the child had merely stood there through it, hands shoved into the pockets of his over-sized basketball shorts. It wasn’t until Five turned around that the kid finally began to speak to him.

“Hey, I’m Connor Lang. I pitch for the baseball team. You’re the new recruit, huh? Coach said you were good. I didn’t expect you to be so little. You’re fast, though - right? And I heard about your arm. Did you really send three kids to the nurse’s office crying during dodgeball? If so, that’s fuckin’ sick. We might even let you play game after next, put Ramses on the bench,” He said. The words sounded easy in his mouth, but his shoulders were up higher than was natural, and he didn’t make eye contact. What was with that? Even Five knew that when talking to people it was appropriate to look them in the eye.

“It would take me about seventeen seconds to have you on the ground under my foot and unable to stand back up. I wouldn’t talk down to me if I were you, Connor. Not if you want me to play your stupid little game, that is - and any team could use a player like me. I have, for a fact, sent three kids to the nurse’s office in tears today, and I won’t hesitate to make it four. Now, apologize and then walk away silently,” Five commanded. The air around him seemed to go dark, and something about his energy became even more terrifying than usual.

Now, Connor was known for his physical strength. He was almost twice the size of most of the other students, could kick almost anyone’s ass, but when he heard the way this kid talked, it unsettled him. He hadn’t even meant to be rude - the guy was just small, but he apparently didn’t like it pointed out. The new boy had this edge Connor had never seen before, and it was creepy as hell. Seventeen seconds? It was so specific; it felt calculated, and it made him take the dude seriously. “Alright, buddy. It’s cool. I didn’t mean to insult you or anything. I’ll fuck right off. Join the team if you want, don’t if you don’t…” he put his arms up defensively while he talked, before he walked away. The kid was crazy, and this was the wildest thing he’d ever experienced. Honestly. What the fuck was up with Number? That name, he was bound to be weird, but he wasn’t just weird. He was insane, off the rails. The kind of kid who could easily end up committing a school shooting if provoked too heavily.

The new boy sighed and glanced over at a wide-eyed, low-jawed Kenny. “Well, that’s taken care of. It looks like I won’t be joining the baseball team, though,” he said with an almost playful smirk. Kenny stared at the boy he knew from the bowling alley and all he could think was wow. Number had just shut down one of the biggest badasses in the school. Scared him away, even. How had he done that, and how did he turn on and off his inner darkness so easily? Where did that terrifying, chilling stare come from? Kenny wondered if Number was alright. Clearly the shooting had messed with him, but there had to be more to it than that. He spotted a book on the table called ‘Childhood Disrupted: How Your Biography Becomes Your Biology, and How You Can Heal’. No kid who didn’t have more going on than was visible on the surface would have a book with that sort of a title. _Maybe I’ll ask my mom how I can help him_ , Kenny thought.

Five had pretty much dismissed the moment already, hadn’t thought much of it. Clearly, others had, because there were whispers all around, but there seemed to be children losing their minds just about any time he did anything. He pulled out his lunch and shoved the heavy developmental psychology book that Maggie had recommended to him back in his bag. Its weight was not just physical, and it had actually really helped him. Not with healing, really, but at least it had given him a better intellectual understanding of the issue. Next on his list from Maggie was a book about the pervasive effects of isolation in youth, but he planned to skip it and read ‘Survival Psychology’ by J. Leach instead. It seemed more interesting.

He pried open his potato with his bare hands, digging into it with his fingertips as he - thankfully - no longer had his long, dirty nails. Once it had been split almost in half, Five opened his plastic bag of goldfish crackers and poured about two-thirds of them on the potato. He then proceeded to smash the halves back together and take a bite out of it. Kenny gave him yet another look, but he only shrugged and took another bite. The bell rang and he put his lunch bag back in his backpack, but he continued to eat the potato as he walked through the halls, dismissing the looks of both horror and complete confusion the students gave him. Their opinions didn’t matter. Right? Right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I guess this is Chapter Eleven! I hope you're liking the fic still, and I hope that I can figure out an update schedule that works a little. Every day was a little too ambitious for me. 
> 
> Anyways, comment letting me know what you think - positive or negative. Feedback gives me great joy. Feel free to give suggestions for future chapters, as well. 💞


	12. Baked Goods and Wax Seals

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Number Five quarrels with his math teacher.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another long delay for the chapter! I'm so sorry, but here it is. I don't mean to be like this. 😭🌷

Number Five was in another room full of disappointments. No, he wasn’t at home surrounded by his siblings. He was in a math classroom. They’d placed him in eighth grade, even though his so-called age made him a seventh grader, and the math class, at least, was at the high school level. That had made him initially almost optimistic about it. A teacher teaching advanced math might not treat him like a child, perhaps would be more competent than average. For once in his life, he had been completely and utterly wrong.

The teacher was the worst of the bunch - a tall, angry looking woman in her late middle ages. She dressed like she was ready to kill, though Five could read people well enough to know that she had never taken a life. Mrs. Portman didn’t have the look of someone who’d killed. He would know; he was no Klaus, couldn’t see the spirits, but he knew when someone was haunted by the things that they’d done. Five saw ghosts in his own way. The same way he saw ashes in the air when he sat still for too long, the way he felt hands that weren’t his own on his skin when he laid down to sleep at night - and yes, the way he believed every bump was a tracker. He’d cut himself open - just to check - at least twice.

As it turned out, they were only bug bites, and the cuts had caused his siblings to think he was depressed. Foolish, honestly. If he had wanted to take his life, he would have been far more precise. He wasn’t a child. Five knew how to kill, and he was good at it - and to actually harm himself he would have had to do something much more severe than that. He’d been engineered to deal with pain. The wiring in his mind had somehow been changed, possibly due to the repeated exposure. All the same, it was infuriating - because explaining would only concern them more. It was an impossible situation, but not opening up was easier, so he stuck with it.

Mrs. Portman had been doing an example problem on the board, speaking gruffly to the class, when she noticed something. The new boy, the little smartass, hadn’t said a single thing the entire class period. It was probably for the best, because if he had she would have written him up, but she hadn’t expected yelling at him once to change his behavior. She knew kids like him. It wasn’t really about knowing more. It was about attention and about being right. They loved to make their teachers look bad. The bigger the audience the better, “Number, you do the next problem on the board. Show us how much smarter you are than the rest of us.” If he wanted to be a showoff, she had no problem with letting him.

Five was roused from his thoughts when addressed. It was strange, how quickly he had grown accustomed to being called something so different than what he had before. Maybe that was what had been like for his siblings when they had gotten names. He wouldn’t know. Never had he been anything other than Five, sometimes Number Five, until now. Of course he didn’t understand - sure, he’d been there, but he’d just… opted out of being named.

Had he accepted a name, it would have been the same as accepting Grace as his mother and Reginald as his father. He would have been opting into the notion that he had an ordinary family. Five did not and never would. Yes, he would do anything for his siblings, and he even had an attachment to Pogo, but ultimately - Grace was a robot and Reginald had taken them from their real parents. He had put a price on Five’s life, like he was a baked good instead of a person.

Lately, however, his relationship with Grace had improved. She was now a machine without a master, and in that way they were much the same. Grace seemed to be almost her own now, despite the processing issues that she had. Throughout his childhood, Five had seen her as feelingless, but now - after Dolores and after his father’s death - she was a human to him on at least some level.

The two connected, in a way, though they rarely spoke. Really, all it was was that he sympathized with her. They’d both been made by other people. Sure, Number Five had far more autonomy, but he still struggled with control. First ruled by his father, then free, only to end up with The Handler - remembering those times when he felt weak made him strong. He wondered if Grace could remember things, or if her code had been changed - if her trauma had been erased. Reginald had treated her worse than anyone, never even given her a room. Did she even know Ben had existed, or had Reginald erased him from her memory? What about him?

“Number! I expect you to listen in class just like any other student - no matter how smart you think you are. Pay attention, and do the problem on the board!” Mrs. Portman shouted again, and he finally shook the childish ideas from his mind. It didn’t matter if Grace remembered him - and anyways, surely she must have because she knew his childhood favorite foods. He stood up and walked to the front of the room, picked up the turquoise marker, and stared at the board.

The problem was simple - a quadratic, the kind that really took no work. Five probably could have solved it in his sleep easily, and he knew the formula by heart, like many others. After forty-one seconds, he uncapped the marker and wrote his two answers: -2 + i and -2 - i. “Would you like me to graph it as well, Portman?” He asked, turning to her.

The older woman looked at the boy with a mixture of confusion and shock. He had solved the problem. They hadn’t even worked with quadratics that had complex solutions yet - he was supposed to be confused and ask for help, that way she could show the class that no student was truly that brilliant. That they needed her to understand the subject matter. “You can’t graph a quadratic with imaginary solutions, Number. Just sit down.”

Number Five blinked at his so-called teacher in disdain. Could someone really, truly know that little about their chosen field? She taught mathematics; she should have known this. “Yes, you can -” He started to say, before he was interrupted.

“Young man, go to your seat before I write you up! I am your teacher, and I know more about this than you. Stop trying to show off to impress your classmates. No one’s amazed by you - they just think you’re annoying and arrogant,” Mrs. Portman shouted at the eighth grade boy.

His jaw tightened and he felt himself getting tense. Not upset, but angry. “Don’t call me young man. I’m right, or I wouldn’t have bothered offering to graph it for the class. It’s not my fault that you went into a field that you knew nothing about it. It would be like me trying to become a child psychologist - it just doesn’t work, and you’re stupid to try it,” he said. His teeth never really came apart and every word seethed from between his lips like snake’s venom.

Mrs. Portman was caught off-guard. She taught the honor’s class and she was known to be the best teacher in her department. To hear a child talk like this, well… it made her utterly furious. She knew firmly that she was right. “I won’t stand for your attitude! Go to the office. Your parents can pick you up from there, and have a nice little talk with the principal about teaching you to respect your superiors.” All the boy did in response was sigh and begin to pack his things.

“Look it up later. I really am right. You can find my address in my file when you wish to send me a formal apology letter. I won’t open it if you don’t bother to use a seal,” Number Five said boredly. He remembered this situation well, back at The Commission, and at home with both Reginald and Luther. People thought that their age and/or status put them in charge, but really - the person who knew the most or had the best leadership abilities deserved to be the one who led. This kind of false authority was exactly what had nearly ended the world.

\- - -

Five sat disinterestedly inside of the school’s main office - in the same chair that he had while Vanya and Klaus had registered him for school, actually. If he looked up, he was able to see Miss Andie typing away furiously on her computer, but he rarely did so. Instead, he pulled out his composition notebook again, and crossed through his old notes. The cruel ones. Five knew that he didn’t have the capacity to do that to his siblings, not after seeing what he had done to Luther. He didn’t like his siblings most of the time and he wasn’t sure that he was truly capable of feeling love, but ultimately they were all he had and were what made the world worth saving.

Not that he could ever tell any of them - they couldn’t know that he’d felt hopelessness or doubt for even a moment. His siblings had to believe that he had been razor-focused on saving the world the entire time. For intellectual reasons, not sentimental ones. No one could ever know that he had desperately yelled their names into the abyss, that he had broken into tears when he had seen the tattoo on Klaus’ dead wrist. People pitied him enough as it were.

He looked at the paper for a moment. Five could still read the marked through words, and it was meant to be that way. He needed to know his own thought process, and Maggie did, too. She was the only person other than him who was allowed to lay so much as a finger on the book.

Number Five pulled his feet up into the chair and rested the paper on his knees, beginning a new list. This one was called ‘Things I Shouldn’t Say’. He started marking down instances in which he had truly upset his siblings, and there were many. He’d easily filled half of the page with little to no thought. There was too much that he had to censor himself about, but the list made it easier. It was difficult to tell, though, what was tease-worthy, good for jokes, and what took it too far and crushed them emotionally beyond repair. Was this a common struggle? He would never know, because he could never admit he cared enough to try and categorize it.

After about twenty minutes, his hand started to ache and his mind was blank. He had filled the page, and his scrawly lettering was already bleeding onto the next page in shaky purple gel pen. It was enough for now, Five decided, closing his book. Just as he did, a tall, lithe woman with curly hair that rested slightly above her shoulders beckoned him into her office. The Handler - but she couldn’t be here, not in this time, and masquerading as principal of a middle school seemed low. Even for her. He feared for the children exposed to her, remembered how she had looked at him when he had returned young. The excitement that had gleamed in her eyes when she had commented on his shorts. Five felt cold, polished fingertips crawling across his skin.

He blinked once. Then again. Suddenly, it wasn’t her. This was no longer a woman, but a man who had light brown hair, though still curly, and a friendly, open face. “Number Five. Come on into my office. Your mother said she’s on her way so that we can talk about what happened today.” Even his voice had a different tone. Calmer. He fully freed himself from his stupor and put his notebook and pen into his backpack, slung it over his shoulders, and followed him in.

Vice Principal Velour nodded at the boy, holding the door open. He was still a new student and, well, Mr. Velour knew that Mrs. Portman was one of the more difficult to get along with teachers, and that this all must be new for a formerly homeschooled student. It was a first offense and he wanted to give the child a chance to explain his behavior - maybe punishment wasn’t necessary today. He preferred that they reached an understanding anyways. It saved him paperwork.

He left the door partially open, as he always did when he was alone with a student. It seemed to put them at ease, and it protected him from a potential lawsuit. These days, teachers and principals seemed to be accused of relations with their students left and right. He didn’t want to fall victim to that. So many innocent men and women had been jailed for it. “So you and Mrs. Portman aren’t getting along? Tell me about that,” He prompted.

Five shrugged his shoulders, “I wouldn’t say that. The thing is, I barely know her and she doesn’t like how good I am at math. She made a mistake today, I pointed it out, and she became… upset, I suppose. Portman thinks I’m a know-it-all, and I am, but ultimately - I’m right. When I know something, I know it - and I know that you can graph quadratics with imaginary solutions. I learned that when I was like nine. Probably earlier, but I’m being generous for the sake of her pride.” Honestly, that woman was even more of a hot-head than he was.

“Interesting. That’s not what Mrs. Portman told me at all. She said that you weren’t paying attention in class, didn’t show your work on a problem, and then undermined her in front of her entire class - and even refused to sit down when she told you to,” Mr. Velour countered. The kid’s story added up, knowing that teacher, but he couldn’t take it at face value. This student seemed to have made some enemies for himself quickly as well - two of his other teachers.

Five nodded his head in response to what the Vice Principal said, “Sounds about right. I didn’t listen to what she said because she wasn’t teaching anything that was new to me, didn’t show my work because I solved the problem in my head, corrected her because she was wrong, and didn’t sit down because she was dismissing my point and treating me like a child.”

As if on queue, the boy’s mother, who also looked shockingly young despite her tired nature, walked in. Vice Principal Velour was honestly relieved, because he did not not know how to respond to a statement like that. He hadn’t been in administration for long.

Vanya walked into the office and immediately threw herself into the chair next to where Five sat. “What happened?” she asked, but her focus was on her brother, not the Vice Principal. She had known he would probably get into trouble, but hadn’t expected it to be so soon. God, he’d only been in school for two days and she was already walking into the office. Surely he couldn’t have done something that terrible already. Actually, this was Five she was talking about, so anything was possible. Maybe she should have called Klaus in for reinforcements? It was too late now.

Five repeated his explanation and, for the sake of simplicity, repeated what Mrs. Portman had told Vice Principal Velour as well. His sister had nodded along quietly before she finally said, “That sounds like him. Five might be a little brash, but he only defends himself like this when he’s right - and he is. I remember when we learned that. If the solutions are imaginary, it just doesn’t touch the little x-line, but it can still be graphed,” Vanya said with a shrug.

Mr. Velour furrowed his brows, “That doesn’t excuse your son’s behavior, Mrs. Five. He still disrespected a direct order from a superior and embarrassed her in front of his entire class. That’s absolutely not acceptable - surely you know that, or were you raised in a barn as well?” This family was impossible. All the woman had had to do was agree that her child was out of line and promise to talk to him about it, but of course she had to defend him.

“My boy has a bit of an attitude, but it sounds like your employee wasn’t treating him with any respect either. If she had just let him talk and explain the graphing process, then we wouldn’t be here right now. He’s clever, and he got bored, so he made some entertainment for himself. It’s what thirteen year old boys do. You should have offered more complex mathematics for him to take, or at the very least teachers that could actually understand what they were teaching,” Vanya caught herself arguing on Five’s behalf, defending him. Usually it went the other way around, and it felt weird, but in a good way. Like she was finally repaying a debt.

Five jumped in, putting a hand on Vanya’s lower arm as if to tell her not to worry about it. She stared, shocked that he had touched her first. Before she could react or say anything, he had pulled back again, returned to his usual posture: that of a confident old veteran. “You have no right to remark about our upbringings like that, Velour. I’ll have you know that -” he paused, stopped himself from saying his sister’s name, “my mother has more culture in the tip of her pinkie than you have in your entire body. Again, like I told Portman. Our address is in my academic file - address the apology letter to her, not me, and make sure to use a seal.”

Vanya looked at her phone, where she had received a text from Klaus, and said, “Well, I’m sorry Mr. Velour, but we actually have got to be going. The school day is as good as over and I need to check in with my husband and get my son home. Thank you for calling me in.” Five was already standing by the door, beckoning her out. Vice Principal Velour looked dazed as the pair left the building. What was with these people? He understood Miss Andie’s comments now. There was something off about that kid, and the mother seemed sweet, but she seemed to have no control over the little demon she was raising - maybe even convinced he was an angel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you like it!! Stay tuned for the next chapter to find out what the text from Klaus said and to see Take Two of Hargreeves Family Dinner. ✌
> 
> Let me know what you think!! Comments mean a lot to me, and of course I love Kudos! 🌻💓


	13. A Drythroated Kestrel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five comes home from school and actually has a pretty good afternoon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oops, my hand slipped and I wrote a mostly happy chapter. Here you go, folks! I hope you like it. It's a little more dialogue heavy than average and significantly less sad.

Five climbed into the driver’s seat of the family’s smaller car and Vanya shot him an exasperated look, but she didn’t stop him. The parking lot was crowded with herds of parents and children escaping the school building. No one would notice. On principle, however, she had to act annoyed. Just so that Five knew he couldn’t make a habit of it.

She had a text to check anyways, so him driving made things easier for her. That was fair to say, right? She wasn’t letting him drive out of fear or because she felt bad about the school situation. Okay, yes. Vanya absolutely did feel bad about what had happened at the school and was one hundred percent letting Five drive because of it - but it wasn’t pity. She just felt badly that someone with his years and experience so often got treated like a child. Driving was one way her brother could feel like he at least had some control over his life. He needed this.

Five looked at Vanya for a moment. Something seemed different about her - contemplative. Was she… sad? That was her usual emotion, when she thought like this, reflected. It felt different, though. After a few minutes, he figured it out. She pitied him. Not the way that Allison pitied him, though. Vanya had empathized with him somehow. No one ever did that - he shut them down when they tried. What was she thinking about him? That was a question that he could never answer. For the wisdom of his years, he was still very ignorant about how others perceived him.

Surely she didn’t think of him as a child and pity him for being in trouble - so what was it, and how had it influenced her actions? He supposed it didn’t matter. At least he was driving. Five liked to be in charge when and where he could - his opportunities to do so were fewer and farther between, now that he had saved the world. One would think that the person who had single-handedly changed the fate of the universe would have more power over their life after the fact, but of course not. His actions hadn’t mattered to anyone. He was still the same child in the eyes of the justice system, in the eyes of the courts - despite the fact that his prints matched ones from a cold case from 1938, despite the fact that he had caused The Great Fire of London in 1666, despite the fact that he was fifty-eight chronologically, and thirty even in this timeline… none of it mattered to anyone because he looked thirteen and lacked a diploma.

It was what it was, though. He had learned to take his situation for what it was - that nothing he could do that would change it at all. When it came to his teachers and the children he studied alongside, they would never believe or understand his situation. It was ridiculous and unrealistic. Had it not been for his insane family and his out-of-the-ordinary, but not extraordinary because it had been terrible, upbringing, he wouldn’t have believed it either.

Vanya looked at Five, who had been staring forward for about thirty seconds. His guard was still up, as almost always, but he seemed almost conflicted or confused. “There’s an opening,” was all she announced quietly. Her brother had been weird lately. Weirder than usual, she thought, but then she remembered when Five had showed up in her apartment and scared her half to death, how she had amusedly commented about how odd he was, and she decided that he wasn’t acting any more strange. Just a different kind of strange. She couldn’t even decide if it was more worrying or not. He seemed so lost in thought all the time. Before, he had been darker, less kind, but more present. Something had changed, but she didn’t know what. Maybe therapy had taught him to feel and he didn’t like what he was feeling. Emma had said that that could happen to her, that it happened to those who had childhood trauma rather often. She wondered if it was worse for those who made it to old age before truly escaping their situations.

Five turned to look at Vanya for a moment when she spoke, nodded, and began to slowly pull out. Traffic was insane at this middle school. It surprised him, because he was probably the only student who drove and, as far as he understood, most parents were working at three in the afternoon. Five supposed that didn’t matter, though. Yesterday, when Allison had driven, it hadn’t seemed so busy. Oh well. It was what it was. He pulled out onto the road.

As he drove, his mind continued to drift. Not so far off that he couldn’t hear or process the words of others, but far enough to make him think about things that he prefered not to. He was a man out of time, and he always would be - no matter how much time travel he tried or how much therapy he attended. The memories would always exist, and he would always be a product of his experiences. Five grumbled to himself about a reckless driver, and Vanya laughed.

At least he was able to make his siblings laugh again. At least they hadn’t died in the apocalypse. He’d done the best he could with what he had, but Five couldn’t help but to feel cheated by the world. Most people’s childhood mistakes were just that: mistakes. His had saved the world, yet it had also had painful consequences. Ones that he lived even forty-five years later.

What would have happened if he had stayed? He had always been a grounding force for oversensitive young Vanya, had helped her to feel like a part of the family. It had been an unspoken arrangement. She listened to him and his theories, and he listened to her. Once a week, on Thursday nights, Five would watch as she played her violin.

Playing an instrument had been a skill that he lacked, something that he was pretty well unable to learn. Vanya had tried to teach him a few times, but it had been frustrating for him. Five didn’t like it when things didn’t come naturally to him. Until preventing the apocalypse, that was - and even then, it was because he had no choice. It was finding his way home to save them, or letting everyone that had ever mattered to him die at the age of thirty.

As soon as he was out there alone, when he knew that everyone was dead and gone, he had realized his mistake. His family meant more to him than he knew how to tell them. Five didn’t want to die alone. There had been times, sure, when he had really thought that he would, when despair had taken over him and he’d dug himself nests in the rubble, crawled into those little holes and waited to die. Once, he had spent five days like that. He’d held Delores and patiently coaxed starvation and dehydration to take him from that painful apocalyptic world.

It hadn’t. The apocalypse showed no mercy. It would try to kill him when he wanted to live, but refused to let him die when he wanted to. Ash had buried his still, almost lifeless form. He could taste the ash on his parched lips and he’d licked them, trying to coat them in saliva. Ineffective. His mouth had been just as dry on the inside as it had been on the outside. That was a feeling that he could never forget. Five went to speak, to ask Vanya what Klaus’ text had said, but his throat had stopped him. The memory had hit him and he felt it again.

Vanya had read Klaus’ text a few minutes ago, and it really hadn’t been worth mentioning until she had more details. Maybe to one of her other siblings it would have been, but not to Five. Klaus had spilled coffee on the couch and wanted help cleaning it up before Luther saw. He didn’t even know where the cleaning supplies were. Vanya had responded, telling him that she was busy with Five and that he would have to Grace. Then, she had received another message that seemed far more pressing. Klaus had gotten a call from Five’s history teacher.

“Five, why would your history teacher be calling Klaus?” Vanya had asked in a quiet, careful voice. She was afraid to broach the topic while Five was driving. He wasn’t a good multitasker and the traffic stressed him out, or at least she figured that that was what it was - because he looked angry every single time that he drove. There hadn’t been much traffic in the apocalypse, which was where she assumed that he had learned to drive. Then again, she had no idea how long he had worked for The Commission. For all she knew, he’d only spent three years in the apocalypse and had been employed under The Handler for forty-two.

The old man hadn’t even turned to look at his younger sister for a moment, had stared straight ahead at the road. “I told her that I wasn’t going to waste my time on telling her how bad she was at her job and left her classroom. She called after me, but I had a meal to go eat, so I ignored her. Perhaps Mrs. Hollinger is upset about that,” Five said. His words themselves were very in character for him, but he had choked them out. As if he were sick or trying not to cry.

Usually, Vanya would have assumed that her brother was ill and not emotional. He never wore his feelings on his sleeve, so she figured that she wouldn’t be able to tell even if he was an emotional mess, but the scene yesterday still burned in the forefront of her mind. “Alright, yeah. I can see that making someone unhappy. That might be why, but Klaus said that she called because she was worried about you. She asked about your burn and wanted to know how you got it. I think she might be investigating Klaus and I as parents,” she mused aloud. Vanya then looked at Five, who had gulped twice in the time that it had taken her to speak, “Are you okay?”

He nodded, but she didn’t believe him. If he had been okay, he would have snapped at her or scolded her for asking, and he hadn’t. Five was always angry, hated when people worried for him - if things were normal, he would have responded harshly.

\- - -

Klaus was barefoot in a long black skirt and his coat with the feathered trim, lying on the kitchen table and holding a Capri Sun in one hand. Vanya chuckled. Klaus never failed to surprise her with his ridiculousness and she welcomed the distraction from her concern about Five.

His unstable nature as of late was unsettling and she started to question what she had said a few days ago, that his therapy was helping. Five took the Capri Sun out of Klaus’ hand, quickly drank it, and discarded it before blinking over to the cabinet, getting a cup, and filling it with lukewarm tap water - which he drank like he would die if he didn’t have it.

There hadn’t even been a chance for Klaus to react before his brother had stolen his entire drink. “I get you an Aristocats cup from my collector’s set to make you feel better when you’re crying and you repay me by bending it out of shape and stealing my Capri Sun? You little bastard,” he had said. His word choice was a little embittered but there was a fondness in his voice that spoke volumes more than his words ever could. He wasn’t mad.

Five blinked out with his water and Vanya shot Klaus an incredulous look, “You’re kidding. He doesn’t cry.” It couldn’t be true, could it? Surely this was another of her eccentric brother’s over exaggerations She already knew the answer to her question, but hoped that she was wrong so that she didn’t have to imagine the traumatized boy sobbing in his bedroom.

“Usually I am, but not this time. Twerp messed up my Berlioz cup and now I have to find another on EBay. At least it wasn’t Toulouse. He’s really rare,” Klaus grumbled playfully to try to ease the heaviness of the subject. “We have really got to get Five to stop taking drinks out of other people’s hands. Like, you guys say I have bad manners, but his are worse.”

Vanya shrugged at the second comment, “I haven’t really noticed anything wrong with his manners, except for the drink stealing. I mean, his table manners at least. He’s not polite or anything, but it’s not like he eats his steak with his fingers or wipes his hands on the tablecloth.”

“Are you sure about that? All of the uniforms he owned were stained. Mom literally threw them all away when he got new clothes because they were gross,” Her brother told her. Actually, come to think of it, Five’s etiquette hadn’t been so great since he returned. He ate quickly, too quickly, scarfing down his food, and had the appetite of a bird. His previous overformality, at least at the table, was long gone. Klaus was right about this one. Five wasn’t at all the same, and there were more differences in his behavior than she’d even considered.

Vanya frowned, “Shit. It was really that bad last night?” The segue seemed a little odd, but it made sense in her mind. Five was just really… off, and it reminded her of yesterday. The first time she’d seen Five really break. He’d looked like a bird of prey, a small scavenger, being faced by a family of bobcats. “He acted weird in the car this afternoon. Weirder than usual. Maybe his mood after yesterday is what landed him in the principal’s office today. And what’s the deal with his history teacher calling you?” She asked. Their brother was not ready to be around others in this capacity at all. What had they all been thinking, sending him to school?

A shrug was the start of Klaus’ response and he sat up cross legged on the table. “Yeah, it was rough, but he wouldn’t want me talking about it. You know how pissy he gets about that kind of thing. His history teacher actually seemed worried about him, which was weird, because he doesn’t typically inspire fondness in authority figures. She said something about him not being very talkative in class and giving her a note at the end with like… corrections to her teaching or something. Then that he just left before she could ask him questions about it. Then she mentioned the burn on his hand.” He laughed a bit, “So I made up a story to calm her down.”

Vanya furrowed her brows. Her brother resumed talking, “I told her we’re getting a divorce and that it’s had our little boy rather upset because he doesn’t want his parents to split up. That he’s headstrong sometimes, but he’s still a really sweet kid who loves his mama and daddy very much. I then said that he had been trying to make us spaghetti for dinner to help us make up when he burned his hand. She didn’t take too kindly to that. Apparently good parents don’t let their thirteen year olds use the stove unsupervised.”

“Of course you’re not supposed to let a thirteen year old cook without anyone watching him. Did you seriously not even think of that? You’re making us look like bad fake parents!” Vanya shouted at him - but jokingly, of course. God. Five was right. This house was full of dumbasses.

Vanya laughed and smiled at her brother, pushing him on the shoulder. “He’ll kick your ass if he finds out you called us his mama and daddy, you know. Lucky for you, I don’t tattle.”

A voice came from the living room. “I heard all of that,” Five called out. He was almost impossible to keep a secret from, it seemed. “Nice improv, Klaus. That should keep Hollinger off my back for a while.” He shared his signature impish smile with them. Vanya smiled, and Klaus laughed. Five retreated up to his room as usual, but he felt better thanks to his idiotic siblings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you liked the new chapter and that you are still enjoying this fic. I love feedback and recognition, so comments are appreciated! Let me know how you feel about this chapter and feel free to drop anything you would like to see in future chapters in the comments. 🌟
> 
> I didn't reply to comments on my advice post because I knew I was deleting it when I posted this, but thank you to those who commented on it. Especially to shrodingers, cylikkious and spikedpoppies who left awesome headcanons for me. 💖


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